Things that don't even look like other things

During my career as a Ghostbuster (Ghostdebunker doesn't have the same nostalgic ring to it), I was regularly disappointed by how easily people would latch onto the flimsiest photographic 'evidence' that seemed to substantiate their belief that our dead ancestors forge dents in metal fireplaces in the background of photos designed to reflect a camera flash from a certain vantage point to vaguely resemble a stretched, out of proportion face, usually missing a couple of key features, but it's the best they could do. Come on, they're dead! Cut them some slack.

Sometimes we might think we see a face in tree bark, an angel in a cloud or Jesus Christ on a dog's arse (that photo sums up the pareidolia phenomenon better than any dissertation could), but what's really happening is the part of our brains that learns to recognise our mothers' faces soon after birth as a self-preservation measure is over-compensating and interpreting random stimuli as familiar objects - faces in particular, or your preferred brand of supernatural icon. It doesn't even have to be very accurate to be perceived as a face, as the seemingly universal recognition of a colon paired with a bracket or other grammatically irrelevant punctuation to express generic emotions attests. N.B. For those who haven't read a couple of Robert Winston books and now think they're bloody psychologists, he means this: :)

This glitch happens more often when the brain is tired or in poor lighting conditions, making late-night paranormal investigation vigils the perfect pareidolia breeding ground. I won't even get into the 'investigators' who deliberately use faulty sound recording equipment because it produces 'better results' than more accurate recorders that don't make a slight breeze passing the microphone sound like Linda Blair violently vomiting green slime in The Exorcist. And don't get me started on 'orb' photos (HOW ARE YOU NOT AWARE OF DUST?)

I'm not on a mission to destroy fun. Pareidolia is at the enjoyable and light-hearted end of the mental illness spectrum and I appreciate it for what it is. I found stories of ghostly apparitions and faces in the floor fascinating when I was a kid, but we're not kids any more - so when you're tired and think a tree looks sort of like a monk, by all means take a photograph, post it to your blog and consider sending it to Richard Wiseman, but don't make more of it than it is and don't insist it looks like a thing when it doesn't even look like a thing.

We fort them hard, we fort them well

I regretted my decision to take the train down Sri Lanka's west coast before I boarded the vehicle, which began rapidly filling up with human cattle even before it came to a halt on the platform. Clearly, these people aggressively shoving past disembarking old women knew something I didn't, and my comparative politeness left me spending most of the sweaty three hour journey squeezing myself into the space in front of people's knees as an endless stream of snack sellers tried to mow down standing passengers with their aisle-wide carts.

Maybe that's why I was so relieved to arrive in Galle's historic Fort district, which felt a lot more peaceful and spacious than other cities in this country, and where I was only pestered by about one taxi driver per minute as I stubbornly walked to my hotel - an unprecedented improvement. I thought Kandy was quite nice, mainly for not being Colombo, but this place is properly nice. I couldn't wait to de-stress and get my work done before heading out early the next morning to take photos.

After a good sleep, Galle seemed less spectacular in the harsh light of day, but it's still the most attractive dilapidated colonial outpost I've visited - more relaxed than Georgetown and Malacca, less sterile than Singapore and the less said about Manila and Malang the better. I like it when people actually live in these heritage attractions, though I had a familiar sense of vague ancestral guilt that the place I felt most comfortable in Sri Lanka was the one largely built by Europeans.

Citadel

'Citadel' is another word I love, like 'dilapidated' (and there's plenty of that here too). It's one of those terms that feels loaded with historical intrigue, like 'labyrinth,' 'catacombs' and 'Maharajah.' Or maybe these words just take me back to early-90s dungeon quest Amiga games. Either way it felt very satisfying to be wading through overgrown fields and discovering parts of Anuradhapura's forgotten city.

At least it feels forgotten compared to the likes of Angkor in Cambodia. I didn't have to make use of odd angles and strategic cropping to avoid the tourists this time - no one was here except me and my monkeys.

The fresh prince of bell stupas

(Yeah, I know - but it was either that or an even worse Star Wars pun based on these bell-shaped shrines being called 'dagobas' in Sinhalese).

The difficult-to-pun Anuradhapura was my third major stop in Sri Lanka, and the point at which this country finally became good. Wandering around in the overgrown ruins of the citadel was my favourite experience in this country, but the dagobas were pretty nice too - mainly for being absurdly gigantic on occasion. These were among the biggest structures in the ancient world, and not all of them have been annoyingly renovated and made to look nice.

Walking around on these vast stone plateaus took me back to the Egyptian pyramids, and I had a similar feeling of awe about the achievements of early human civilisation, long before the founding of Rome or Athens.

Or aliens did it, whichever.

Eye Kandy

Despite receiving a typically bad first impression of taxi drivers in Sri Lanka when a driver charged me 100 rupees to retrieve my own bag from his vehicle (to be fair, I had left it on the seat and he'd had to drive back around the corner again to find me, but still - prick), and generally having to shoo away more relentless taxi touts than mosquitoes in this country, I gave them a second chance by arranging a tour of Kandy and the surrounding area with a more reputable driver.

I was hesitant because I don't feel comfortable having my own dedicated driver, the same way I don't like people serving me in restaurants (you can cook the food, but at least let me do the washing up). But I wanted to see as much as I could in as short a time as possible, so as with Siem Reap and Jeju Island I ticked off a week's worth of blog material in one day, giving myself plenty of free time to lie around in my pants reading novels about Benedictine monks and eating ginger nuts. Makes you wonder why I complain so much, doesn't it?

This was supposed to be a day tour, but because I'm an efficient, unfeeling android with no interest in lingering in places beyond the time it takes to collect sufficient photos to document their existence in this blog (and because I passed up the factory visits after experience in Egypt taught me most of this time would be spent politely declining samples in the stores) we were finished by lunchtime.

The time traveller's strife

The concept of time travel is so fascinating and multi-faceted, it's a shame I'm completely incapable of wrapping my head around it, however often I try.

Sure, I can keep track of the overlapping timelines in the Back to the Future films, unravel the gender-bending ontological paradoxes of Robert A. Heinlein's short stories and get frustrated when a below-par episode of Red Dwarf breaks its own time travel rules established 20 minutes earlier in the same episode, but when it comes to the practical, real-world experiences of crossing time zones or adjusting for daylight savings time and then trying to work out if I've gained or lost hours from my day, the rusting, wheezing cogs in my brain grind to a halt. But time keeps ticking on.

I began 2011 at GMT +8 and ended it at GMT +9, which I think means my year was one hour shorter than it should have been overall. Is that right? I mean, I travelled back and forth a lot last year, give or take a couple of time zones, but unless the universe works in a very different way than the one I'm barely grasping as it is, that doesn't add up into any extra or lost hours... does it? I'm not even joking, I really am this hopeless with numbers.

But I don't have to despair or feel cheated out of my hour (or hours), because this year we were all awarded an extra day for good behaviour, free of charge. Happy Leap Year!

Oh Bohollocks

After a pleasantly sunny first day in Bohol, I was woken early to find the typhoons had followed me south. I thought I'd escaped their inexplicable wrath, but like the Grim Reaper and those scary flying faces in Mario 2, they were going to catch up with me sooner or later.

The tour guide taking our depleted group around the island's sights couldn't understand it - apparently the storms don't usually reach this far below the typhoon belt. I felt guilty. Clearly I'd done something to piss off Anitun Tabu, Thor, Tlaloc or one of the other storm gods, and according to Oliver (who knows about these things), I needed to get a blessing to make things right again.

But where should I go? Which one of these obviously pretend deities was the right one?

Then I remembered - there is only one God; namely God (clue's in the name, duh). Silly me! I'd spent so long in the heathen world that I'd forgotten. Luckily for me, the Philippines was raped by the Spanish 500 years ago and they sorted things out by leaving the permanent scars of Catholicism and Colonial architecture. I just had to find me a church. Gracias, señores!

Ubud-der believe it

If you can drag yourself away from the monkeys in Ubud, there's plenty more to see around the unspoilt capital of Bali.

That's 'unspoilt' meaning no big shopping malls or KFCs - you can still rely on hawkers trying to force the same five pieces of tourist tat down your throat every time you come across something worth photographing, ensuring you have all you'll ever need to commemorate a right ripping-off time on the Island of the Gods. You can never have too many shit 'Jiggy-Jig' T-shirts.

See you in hell

'We got totally lied to by our album covers.'

Bill in hell (Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey)

Remember I was concerned that I might have seen the best of Singapore on my first day here? I've never been more wrong about anything in my life. Today, I came across what is undoubtedly THE best thing in Singapore. Maybe in the whole of Asia. Hell, this might be the best thing there's ever been.

The Ten Courts of Hell at Singapore's hilariously dilapidated Haw Par Villa was apparently built to educate Chinese emigrants about their cultural traditions and beliefs, to keep them alive so far from home. But clearly, whoever built it had a bigger agenda than just education. There is no need for it to be as absurdly graphic as it is. I absolutely love it!

Like an over-zealous Sunday school teacher, this is an attraction designed to terrify young Chinese kids into being good, upstanding citizens. I first heard about it in a novel I read a while ago, in which a young Singaporean's grandfather took her here repeatedly to instil mortal dread. You can't imagine my delight to discover it's actually real!

There are only two ways this spectacularly grotesque attraction could be improved: if it included animatronics, and if I'd visited here when I was 10.

Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here

Mouldering in Malacca

A dead stuff special, set in one of the biggest Chinese graveyards outside of China and an old Portuguese church stolen by those thieving, plundering Dutch. God, I hate the Dutch. They should all go back where they came from. Wherever that is.

The Curse of Kellie's Castle

I was pretty excited to find a genuine Scottish castle out here in Peninsular Malaysia. That's genuine Scottish insomuch as it's built in Indian design by Indian labourers, many of whom mysteriously DIED during its construction.

Could this be sensibly attributed to the outbreak of Spanish flu that spread from Europe to Asia after the First World War? Or could it be that Kellie's Castle... is CURSED? You know, the same way Egyptian tombs and Oliver aren't. This sounds like a job for an experienced paranormal investigator...

Royal pain in the Azlan

The self-styled Royal Town of Kuala Kangsar doesn't feature on many travel itineraries of Malaysia. You'd think I'd have learned by now - especially after such pointless places as Dulan - that this probably means it isn't massively worth spending my precious time visiting. But with my generous Malaysian visa putting me under less time pressure than I had in Thailand, I mistakenly thought this meant I could visit any old place and have a worthwhile day out.

However, that wasn't accounting for renovation work, reclusive sultans, dehydration and the leg anxieties of a non-existent god, which together meant I hardly got to see any of this place. I am perhaps slightly bitter. The fact that when you get down to it, most of these 'problems' can be blamed squarely on myself is of no consequence - Sultan Azlan Shah owes me my afternoon back! Even if he has an enviably cool name.

Still, the architecture's pretty impressive, right? Though it's not like I got to see inside any place.

Wat the heck

Thai Temples are called 'wats,' you see? Oh, you knew. Fine

I don't like indulging and endorsing superstitious woo, but after recent events strengthened my friend Oliver's belief more fervently and irrationally than ever before that he is literally a walking diaster area (sometimes he doesn't even have to walk), I figured paying 50 baht to get him a 'blessing' would be worth it if it gives him any small measure of placebo-style comfort.

That's the kind of guy I am: cheap. Unfortunately, it all went tits up.

(Chiang) Mai-y first earthquake

I arrived in Northern Thailand and felt My First Earthquake today. Chiang Mai is exciting already!

Fortunately for almost everyone (especially this blog, which has permission to be jovial in the circumstances), this one was nothing like as devastating as some of the earthquakes that struck other parts of the world in recent weeks. But at 6.8 magnitude, it was still powerful enough to shake buildings as far away as Bangkok.

I was closer than that - about 100 miles from the epicentre, which was in north-eastern Myanmar - but it all took place far inland, so there were no dangerous waves to worry about. My bungalow swayed gently for about 20 seconds, and that was it.

Oliver's Bangkok Diary (by Dave)

Disclaimer: The attitudes ascribed to characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to what Oliver actually thought is marginal at best

I met Oliver in Bangkok this week (honestly: above photo hasn't been doctored). This was a coincidence, because I thought he was in a different hemisphere. We were even staying in the same dorm, almost as if this was somehow planned.

There's my goddamn monkey!

Cheeky monkey tried to eat my headphones

How's that for a happy ending? No, not that kind. Even though I'm in Thailand.

I had time in my schedule (ha ha, the very idea that my life has anything as structured as a 'schedule') to fit in another couple of Thaislands before heading back to Thmainland (that one doesn't work so well, it just looks like I'm dyslexic).

So I chose Koh Samui for macaques, cock rocks and corpses.

Alien City

I knew it! What have I been saying all along? And to think I spent all those years mocking David Icke for his crackpot theories that aliens were among us here on Earth, just because he lacked evidence or true facts.

Here's all the evidence you need that the Taiwanese people are from another planet (or at least the ones in Hualien City). Or I might be making too much of a slightly vandalised sign.

Get your ass to Mars

Went to Mars today. Check it out!

Taipei Temple Tour (Twenty-Ten)

'Buddhists believe that the body is a temple. They are wrong, of course. The temple is a part of the body. On the side of the head. It's an easy mistake to make, but one you'd think that one of the world's millions of Buddhists would have spotted by now.'

- Stewart Lee, Fist of Fun

With my tatty notebook, dodgy Egyptian camera and MRT map dropped into my unrealistically deep pockets along with the rest of the essentials, I was ready to embark on a breakneck tour of all the major temples in Taipei City today - until it was pointed out to me just how tedious this would be.

But that's okay, because I'm an ignorant Westerner visiting China (not actually China, but what do I know?) So when I say 'temple' I don't actually mean a sacred building where the public go to worship the Jade Emperor and co. and light joss paper. Nah, I mean any Oriental-looking building, preferably red, with paintings on the outside and those funny sloping roofs. That's temple enough for me. Even if it isn't temple at all.

Black and white and nearly dead all over

Tuan Tuan: What is my favourite dual-function gland organ, Yuan Yuan?

Yuan Yuan: Is it the panda-creas, Tuan Tuan?

You have to admire China for its panda-based attitude towards international relations. Genocide, human rights atrocities - the world has yet to invent a problem that China won't attempt to solve by throwing an irrelevant panda in its direction.

Because everyone loves pandas! You'd have to be a world-weary cynic or some sort of educated person to view Beijing's gift of two giant pandas to Taipei Zoo with scepticism. Just because it undermines decades of fragile Taiwanese independence, potentially contravenes the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species and treads perilously close to a united front stratagem.