Sep 2005

thought i would finish up my blog/journal before i head back tomorrow. after today it will just be alot of waiting around at various points ( bangkok, bahrain, london) which wont be fun to do or read about at a later date, so i am not going to bother.

i am now back in bangkok, again, and each time i return it feels more relaxed and comfortable. i will admit now, as i dont think i did it when i first got here, that when i first arrived it scared the crap outta me, but now - me being the experianced traveller i am i kinda like it.

pattaya i didnt like so much, i think i am about 40 years to young to fully appreciate it for what it is. although plenty of westerners, of a certain age, seemed to enjoy it. so i only stayed a couple of nights and got back here on saturday. did some crazy shopping and bought enough clothes to ensure that i had to buy a cheapo bag to transport them back home.

i got introduced to the craziest street in bangkok - soi cowboy - by the ex-number 1 in germany at table tennis and have spent a couple of nights really 'living it up' before i go back. also found a nice little indian restaurant which is showing the cricket and so have been camped there the last 2 days, praying for the good old english weather to help us out. touch wood it looks like it might just do it for us.

so its my last night in bangkok and to be honest i am planning to go out on a high - my plane leaves tomorrow night at 6 so i figure i have all day to sleep off whatever i do tonight and it would be a good way to finish the trip off.

so as this journey draws to a close i thought i might do a list of my high and low lights. so;

Thailand

highs - Ko Phi Phi, tiger temple at khanchanaburi, jungle treking, oh and the thai lasses

lows - stupidly long bus journeys

Laos

highs - tubing in vang vieng, fast boat to luang prabang

lows - being sick out of a bus window

Vietnam

highs - doing my padi course, nha trang, shooting a double barrel shot gun and an ak47

lows - halong bay, 3rd degree burns on my chest

Cambodia

highs - killing fields

lows - bed bugs and everything else really

Malaysia

highs - teman negra, shopping in KL

lows - perthian islands

i have really enjoyed my time here and hopefully i will never forget it - although my memory is friggin useless. anyway it might give me an excuse to come back.

to all those i have met, i thank you - for without you it wouldnt have been the same. dont get me wrong - i didnt like all of you, and you do meet alot of idiots over here (mainly english it has to be said) - but i wouldnt have changed it.

maybe see you next time - looking at going to the following places, hopefully sooner rather than later - central america, south africa, europe, canada, south america, india..............................

well i am now in seedy pattaya, 2 hours east of bangkok and its pretty much what i expected it to be. i decided to head for here after spending a few days in khanchanaburi. arrived last night after a 4 hour bus journey, via bangkok.

when i got to khanchanburi i managed to find a cheapo room, near the river kwai. first thing that struck me was the size of place in general - they advertise it as a little town when in reality its a decent size. the main draw for me of going at all was the tiger temple run by monks, where you get to sit and stroke etc wild tigers. i have met so many people who have done it and said that its an awesome thing to do. so when i got there i looked into it striaght away and was told that now no one is going there because of a dispute with the tour companies. nightmare and i was gutted. a couple of days later i made enquires and found that if you get a taxi they might take you.

in the end it took me standing on the street for a couple of hours flagging down random folks to get one booked. the only other problem was a lack of people to go with me - in order to share the cost of it. went back to the guesthouse and basically acted as a tour guide for the temple and managed to get 5 other people to come along with me. result.

the day was really good and the tigers were great. got a few pictures of me stroking them and cuddling them - wild, non chained tigers. hopefully the disposable camera did its job and they will come out ok. afetr we return 'my' group went out for a few drinks and a meal and i felt like a tour operator - although no one gave me a tip! that night two of them, an aussie couple, stayed up with me to watch the england game and spent a small fortune drinking sangsom. all three ofus felt shocking yesterday on the trip back to bangkok, before we split and i went to pattaya.

i did a tour of hell fire pass the historical site, erawan waterfalls and then a 2 hour train ride back along the railway and over the bridge. it was pretty good and very cheap - last minute and cancellation of another trip meant they gave it me for half what it should have been.

the waterfalls were probably the highlight, as it is a 7 stepped jobby. the walk upto the 7th step was long and steep but worth it for the swimming. no one tells you about the fish, i mean you can see them, some pretty big but no one tells you what they do. the little buggers bite you, well clean you as you sat there, which was strange/painful/strangely nice.

my cheapo room turned out to be a bit of a nightmare really - i got bitten badly everynight by ants on my feet - again. so they are back to being a real mess. thats one thing i will def not miss about asia.

so i think i will stay here tonight and then maybe head back on saturday or sunday to bangkok before i fly out on tuesday.

everynight untill i leave will be taken up by watching the 5th and final ashes test, in which i have no doubt england will stuff it up.

i am now back in bangkok having left Ko Phi Phi yesterday on the last of my long trips, apart from the flight back. complete jounrey yesterday took roughly 23 hours from start to finish and when it did i couldnt have been more happy about it. why do people snore when they sit next to me on long overnight bus journeys?

anyway on Phi Phi i found i nice guesthouse to stay for the 10 nights i planned to stay and it turned out that i was the first person to stay there since the reopening after the tsunami. maybe thats why he gave me such a reasonable (well for phi phi) price. it turned out the guys working/owning the place was mental and inisted that every night we had a little party to celebrate the fact that he had a customer(s) in. this turned out to be an event which took place everynight whilst i was there and often ended in a near by bar.

whilst i was there i decided get off my arse and do some volunteering work with a charity on the island. as a result i did various 'exciting' tasks such as gardening (strimming) the memorial garden, picking up litter from the beach and moving collected rubbish into a pile so it could be burned at night. it was good to feel like i was doing something useful and giving something back, especially as it was my second time there.

despite this i wanted to do something more tangible and actually see the benefits from what i was doing. so i offered my services to Ahn and Dunm the guesthouse owners. they couldnt believe that a paying guest, wanted to work for free. but 'shockingly' they let me work for nothing for 5 days. i painted the outside of the building, helped to dig the foundations of the next project (toilet block of a camp site) was let loose with an nail gun and even put up curtains in the rooms. on my last day of 'working' i went to the pier with them to drum up business and get some guests for the finish rooms.

between the 3 of us we managed to fill the guesthouse and had a 'little' party in that honour. this ended up in a bar called hippies and it was the half moon party night. it was pretty good from what i remember of it untill i had an arguement with a bartender about the lack of change he had given me, and he decided it would be good to smash a bottle over the back of my neck and get me thrown out. the cuts and bump my neck has more or less healed now and the 3 day headache i had has gone. i still dont know what i said to him but as he didnt speak much if any english i guess i will never know.

anyway for all my efforts with the guesthouse they got me totally drunk everynight - an exercise which became even more enjoyable when we got a group of swiss lasses to stay. and strangely i must have done something right as they offerred me a job working within the empire. they are planning to build a 2nd guesthouse, a campsite and a bar in the next 6 months. i saw the plans for it all and it looks pretty good and he said i could work in any of them and have free accomodation and a small salary. its a nice thought but i took it with a pinch of salt, despite that fact he has got my email address and my mobile phone number so you never know.

i had a day off from working and getting beat up and went snorkelling with black tip sharks. i wanted to go diving but no one was doing the wreck dive so the sharks got my attention. it was brillant and as you didnt have a tank on your back you didnt scare them away straight away and got to swim around a group of them before they realised what was going on and buggered off.

so i am now back in bangkok, at the same guesthouse as before doing the same stuff as before i guess - like nothing has changed in the time since i first arrived. i am staying here for 2 nights i think and then i am off to either pattaya or khanchanaburi, probably the later first as i think i am more likely to wanna stay there for an extended period, what with the tigers etc.

only ten days left!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!