The Yukon Territory

I've been in the Yukon for the past 3 months and I have one more month to go.  It has been quite the experience up here from the isolation to the copious amounts of snow and to Dawson City and back - which is my opinion is the best city in the Yukon that I've been to.

Where to start, well how about the five day drive from Vancouver BC to Whitehorse YK. I was very fortunate to have my good friend Woodsy accompany me for the drive. We drove from Van to Quesnel (6.5 hours) from Quesnel to Fort St. John (7 hours) from Fort St John to The Liard Hot Springs (7.5 hours) from Liard to Whitehorse (7 hours) and then Finally from Whitehorse to Fraser (1:20 hours). 

The trip went incredibly smoothly and we were lucky enough to see some wild life on the way up! (I'll add some pics). We saw a heard of Long Horned sheep, while I was mesmerized by one, another one from the other side of the road had wondered onto to the road a little and we almost took his head off - sweeeeeeeeerveeeee and a miss. That was day one.. Then we saw two separate groups of Caribou - which was pretty damn cool, we saw the ass end of a moose as he head back into the forest, we saw a shite load of buffalo and I think thats it...I'll add a bunch of pics at the end of the post. 

When we stopped in Fort St. John we found an ODR (Out Door Rink) which was so unreal to skate around on - it's been many years as I'm from Ottawa and Woodsy is from just outside of Red Deer so we're used to the ORD lifestyle. An un-delightful thing about living in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland is the lack of ODR's!

Then in Liard we hit the hots springs, wicked experience in the middle of no where theres a natural hot spring and the only place to stay is a lodge $169 doll hairs a night. That night was definitely a highlight of the road trip. Then the last long drive was to Whitehorse which was littered with buffalo which was pretty cool. 

While in YK I went dog sledding. If you ever have the chance to experience what it's like to have 6 dogs rocket up and down hills I would recommend spending the $200 doll hairs for a 4 hour day. It was unreal, during the pristine weather conditions they brought me deep into the wilderness, over frozen lakes and through narrow wooded areas. I felt that sense of freedom that only comes over you during special experiences like this. It was wonderful.. So I had my own sled and then I was with one guide and she had her own. every once and a while she would stop and let me know that a steep downward hill was upcoming and to be hard on the brake (a metal piece that step on and digs hard into the snow) after a few times of her warnings I felt like I was a pro and every time she told me I politely nodded not thinking too much about it.. my first mistake.. Theres a really steep one coming up Shane, ya ya ya I've already been down too. Well this one was a step as MOFO.. and I damn near learned how to fly while I caught air and slammed on the break when I was finally able too. you have to be careful for the safety of the dogs too, because if you don't break properly then you can run into them and injure them. They are working their asss off for you too so you gotta respect that. 

At first I felt a little bad because they were exhausted going up a few steep hills. but after a while I could tell that they lived for it. We stopped for. few minutes on a frozen lake to give them a break and take a few pictures. They were going crazy because they want to keep going. once you put that harness on them they were zoned IN. Just ready to tear up the ground beneath them.. it was pretty cool to see. 

The woman who ran/owned the dogsledding company was originally from France and had no employees. She worked everyday of the winter from December 5th to there end of March. She was probably making a killing. She lived in the tiniest little cabin with her husband and 3 year. it was smaller than anything I'd ever lived in and I had some smalllllllll living arrangements. Overall I give it a solid A for the whole experience. 

Whitehorse is a decent city, I expected more from it but it has some hot springs a 15 minute drive away and a solid games centre with 2 skating rinks, indoor soccer, indoor basketball, pool, gym hot tub and booster juice in it. Relatively small city with a population of 26,000, even more interesting the population of YK is 36,000 so only 10,000 people live in the rest of the territory. 

Theres an ODR about a one hour drive from where I'm living and it is the best one I've ever seen. connected to the ice there a an area thats enclosed with a wood stove where you can warm up and tie up your skates.. while looking at the mountains that surround you. That was one of the main reasons I wanted to come out this way. Awesome ..

Oh man, and a few days ago I got back from a 2 night trip to Dawson City, which is a city 7 hours away from where I live. It's pretty far up north. I went there with a guy I met up here and we had a great ole time. It's an old school mining town with so much character and the people there are so friendly. If you met someone once and saw them again another day it was like you'd been friends for a month. I love small communities like that. I was the tail end of the winter season so It wasn't that busy but we arrived on St. Paddy's Day which was the last day of a festival called Thawdy Graw. We missed out on some cool stuff but met a few people that told us all about it and were lucky to catch the last night where there was a ton of people still jacked up about the fest.

It looked like an old western town and theres a tradition there which will rattle your socks a little. I heard the story but can't fully remember what it was so I'll just get right down to it.  Back in the day, like wayyyyy back there was a guy who lost his toe to frostbite. I have no idea how exactly it happened but at the hotel tavern we actually stayed at they have a frostbitten toe on salt. it's black and looks like Bigfoot shite it out of his Jane. You better believe I have pictures of it. Soooo anyway.. Theres captain and he whips up, what they call, the Sour Toe Cocktail. How it works is they pour a shot of Yukon Jack (A sweet 40% whisky - which is actually really good) the captain hold up the toe and says "You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow but your lips must touch the toe" and the she drops the black, frostbitten, human toe into the shot of Yukon Jacks and you drink the shot and toe comes up and touches your lips. Obviously me and my buddy did this and it was a great experience. People come from all around the world to do this in Dawson City. The only place you can do it is at the Downtown Hotel tavern - which is the hotel we were staying in. The time in Dawson was so much fun and nice to get away from where we were staying for a bit. 

On the way out of town we went to see an old mining historical site where there was this huge machine called a dredge. The dredge was used to sift through rocks and dirt to find gold (obviously). 

The during the drive back Blair saw a huge creature crossing the road a little ways in front of us. It turned out to be a pack of wolves! We got a good look at 3 of them and then a few more stayed back in the bush. Really cool to witness. They were massive..

now I'm back at the place where I'm staying and everything has begun to thaw, the snow and ice are quickly disappearing and I've been told that there are quite a few bears up here.. so I'll have to wait and see if I get to witness any of that action. 

In a few weeks I have a another road trip planned with Koliacivo who's gonna fly up from Vancouver.  Were gonna be doing a 12 hour drive to Fairbanks Alaska. That should be sweet. As for now I'll post a bunch of pictures. I usually only do blogs for long actual trips where I'm travelling but this post is for J-Boy as per request. Thanks for the love and support buddy. And also my Mom :) Love ya and happy birthday.. soon ! Oh I saw a lynx a few times too!

 That paper I'm reading me is legally telling me that I can't put eh toe in my mouth or swallow it or it's a $2500 fine. It used to be $500 but people were eating it... nasty

These are the long horned sheep I almost smoked one 

S-21 Torture Prison, The Killing Fields and Phnom Then Cambodia

Its been over a month since I have returned from my trip to Malaysia / Cambodia, to be honest I don’t even know where I left off.. so I’ll just wing it. 

I visited the Killing fields and the S-21 torture prison when I was in Phnom Phen. It was quite an experience tp visit both.. Its difficult to even begin to put into words what it was like.. There was a 5 year period in Cambodia where the strength of the government was lower than ever partly due to the Vietnam war and a man but the name of Pol Pot (or I should say an evil sociopath piece of shit with no soul who is certainly burning in hell right now) began a communist political party called the Khmer Rouge. He led the party and brought in a few bothers and family members to completely form it. The Khmer Rouge (KR) first began by pushing all the citizens out of the big cities, namely the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Phen. They told the greater population that they needed to evacuate because the US was bombing close by in Vietnam and for safety purposes it was necessary to leave the city. In the past the US had dropped a few bombs in Cambodia accidentally due to the close proximity to Vietnam. We’ll namely talk about Phenom Phen but this happened across the country. 

The people were advised to take only what they could carry and walk out of the city. With the citizens not knowing what the future held they complied. While being led out of the city by the KR the KR soldier who were trained separately and brainwashed took inventory of all the citizens. Secretly all of the Doctors, lawyers, politicians, police officers, military and basically anyone who was classified as an intellectual were taken away from the main groups of people and killed. The KR did this so no one would have power or influence over them. KR wanted complete control to do as they pleased. 

The people were advised to take only what they could carry and walk out of the city. With the citizens not knowing what the future held they complied. While being led out of the city by the KR the KR soldier who were trained separately and brainwashed took inventory of all the citizens. Secretly all of the Doctors, lawyers, politicians, police officers, military and basically anyone who was classified as an intellectual were taken away from the main groups of people and killed. The KR did this so no one would have power or influence over them. KR wanted complete control to do as they pleased. The remaining greater population were led to labour camps to farm rice. 95% of these people were urban city dwellers that had no idea how to farm. They were giving just enough food to survive although some died due to malnutrition and starvation. Pol pot them started to become paranoid and began to sen people to the S-21 torture prison where thousands of people were tortured and killed because they were to believed to be working with the CIA - pretty much everyone was not. 99% maybe even 100% because the outside world had no idea what was going on in Cambodia. KR would not let anyone in or out of the country at this time. 3 million people were brought to the killing fields and slaughtered. Finally after 5 years of turmoil  when the Vietnam war was over Vietnamese troops entered the country, saved the remainder of the population and helped to restore a legitimate order int he country. I could go on and on about what I saw but its pretty gruesome, tons of pictures, of people who had been tortured, thousands of skulls, bones, teeth. They had a tree at the Killing fields where they would hold babies…. Babies.. by 2 legs and smash their heads against the tree.. reason being is in Cambodia they believe in retaliation - when someone does something to you or your family Cambodian people then retaliate and do twice as worse to that person or their family. We’ll move on from all of this terrible history. 

After experiencing this I started to walk though Phnom Phen.. Still taking it all in and looking around just imagining the what this city and country went through. My stomach still wasn’t feeling 100% because of the little food poisoning deboggle that I had been through the few days before. I found this restaurant and ordered some soup thing with red liquid. It was out of this world, one of the best thing I’ve ever had in my life, the fusion of flavours were indescribable. I continued walking through the city, stopped and had lunch/dinner in front of the Mekong river called a friend friend from Germany and reminisced about pervious travel adventures. Tomato picking to be exact as we had went through that together in Australia. After I my meal and conversation I walked over to the edge of the river, where there was a slanted 50 foot drop which you could walk down. I sat on the ledge on top and took in all that was happening around me. There was an old man beside me that I began to talk with and feel him out. After building a bit of repport I asked him how old he was. He told me he was 60 something and then I politely asked him if he minded me asking about his time in Cambodia during the KR regime. I sat his and listened and asked and listened and asked.. It was a huge highlight of the trip being able to hear about his story, especially after faint to the S-21 torture museum and Killing fields. I was able to listen first hand to his account, how he felt.. about his family.. that were all killed. It was a very special thing to experience. I bought him some beer and we sat there for around 1-2 hours before he had to go. This was a big highlight of the trip. An educating day hearing about the atrocities that took place in the country but also a community and society that overcame their past, embraced it and focused on sharing their story. Truly special to go through. 

I went to Bangkok for a few days the next day and flew home. 

I’m currently sitting in the Whitehorse Airport in the Yukon waiting for my flight to go back to Vancouver. I’ve been in the Yukon for a month and am going to be home for 4 nights. I will then drive up here (5 days). I’m considering writing a mini-blog for the experiences that tale place while I’m here !

I know Josher would like to read about it :) love ya buddy. Thanks for the call the other day LOOLLL

This concludes my Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia and 2 days in Bangkok trip. 

It was spectacular. Next November I plan on going to Myanmar for 2.5 weeks and Thailand for 1.5 weeks. 

Thanks for reading 

Shaner









frog in our bathroom on an Island in Cambodia, he lived in a hole under the sink



Any picture with bones, skulls or fragments of humans is from the killing fields



Tandem bike ride in Melacca (Malaysia) and beautiful Banana in front of a hidden bar called the the Golden Shower in Georgetown Penang (Malaysia)



We slept outside on the balcony in this bed on a Cambodian Island - unreal waking up to the waves.





I actually met a man that was one of the few that survived the S-21 torture prison in Phnom Phen and then this bed is where tons of people were bolted down to and tortured..











In the hammock on our beachfront Bungalow on a Cambodian Island and then two lovely locals trying to sell is food. Banana gave them free food :)

Heres the puke picture upon request of Josher









That blue barrel is where we showered and the spider jumped on me.

The guy in the pic was a beauty we played pool while we played int he tournament.