Thank you and other stuff.

Thank you to everyone who sent me emails and texts to make sure I'm alive, I'm grateful that you care! :) You're all lovely people, thank you. I really don't deserve it.

Dunno how to feel today Guilty is one thing I suppose, when the waves are killing people in Africa and Koh Phangan is completely unaffected, both physically and emotionally. Last night everyone should have been hugging the nearest person to them and thanking God or Buddha or whoever that nothing happened here, what did everyone do?

They went to the beach and got blind drunk. Life goes on I suppose, but would they be partying in Bournemouth if Brighton got washed away? I dunno.

There were three guys I was in Kanchaburi with who were very cool. They were going to Phuket for Christmas, I hope they're alright. No way of knowing. I could've just as easily gone down there with them as come here. Fate eh? It's a fucker.

Went to a cafe today and they were showing footage on a big screen of last night's full moon party. On a smaller screen just underneath it they were showing pictures of the waves in Indonesia, India and Thailand washing people away. Made me feel sick.

Sorry about this one, just trying to jot some things down before I forget them.

Peace out, Thank you.

Fucking hell.

Things are proper fucked up on thewest coast. Thousands dead and more missing, presumably washed out to sea. People living in bungalows on the beach just like mine.


Yet. Here in koh Phangan, the Full moon party is just warming up and things are completely normal, save for the phones being busier with people calling worried relatives. Looks like it's going to be a busy night. What a load of bullshit, really.


I'm alive by the way.

Happy Birthday Jesus.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Ch ch ch Changes!

Things are very different here now. The Israelis have arrived in force and are desperatley trying to pull anything in a skirt. There are so any of them they outnumber everyone else three to one. It's not a problem for me, but a few of the girls in our group are getting a little annoyed with the agressive chat up techniques.

Theplace is really filling up and they reckon there's gonna be about 18 000 people here by christmas. Good job I have a great bungalow, my prematureness has paid off once again! ;)

Not much else to say. getting into the christmas spirit... Well Whisky ayway.

Went to the half moon trance party in the jungle, it was a full on sausagefest and more than a little shit. Take my advice kids. Trance is bad.

Going out to eat some mexcan food and celebrate a birthday. Someone mentioned mushroom shakes.... *Shiver runs down spine*

Things haven't got quite as bacchanalian as my time in Prague, but I'm sure it's coming...

Sorry about this.

Not much to report, so I'll do it in list form so as not to get bogged down in rubbish flowery prose.

• Hut on the beach
• Mangrove trees lining the beach
• hammock
• sunset from hammock outside hut with cocktail
• Good bars
• Reece's nutrageous bars
• which are by the way REALLY good bars.
• Swim before breakfast
• Swim after breakfast
• lounge till sunset
• blue sky
• Turquoise water
• God, it's hell. I wish I was back in England with a week to go until christmas.

I think I realised why...

...Those Canadians left. When they were moaning about the fact that all the bars here show big screen hollywood blockbusters all night I replied 'but it blocks out THE VOICES for a little while dunnit?' Maybe I scared them?

Moved to another place. Much livelier, hut on a beach where the sand looks like vanilla ice cream, loads of mangrove trees and palms and best of all... European toilets! It's a bit more expensive, but surely it's worth it? The chance to sit on a throne of my own in my own good time and with no reason to shed clothing?

I think so.

Another wacky tale in my crazy life.

Watched

Alexander - Rubbish and camper than Glastonbury festival.

And

Shark's tale - Quite funny in places Jack black was a bit rubbish though. Except for one line.


Umm... So Got sunburn on my arms from riding around on a scooter all day. Met a couple of cool Canadians but they went back to Bangkok today. Everybody else here is some sort of clone:

Tousled blonde hair, tube tops and weird cheerleader skirts for the girls (fake von dutch)

Tousled blond hair, Logo tshirt (fake von dutch) and Trucker caps for the guys. Unless they're Israeli, in which case horrific giant tribal tattoo all over. I can't talk... Bought a zero skateboards cap in Bangkok the other day. At least it's not von dutch I guess.

But I guess Jealousy gets me nowhere.

And besides. They don't know what my dad's got.


Are you not entertained?

Didn't go Cheesey Quaving...

Well, I turned up, saw the people going in and heard the bang bang bang-and you can't hear the words music and turned my bike around and went for a little ride around instead. Then I read From a buik 8 by Steven King. Not my first choice, but it was the only book in the guesthouse that wasn't in German. quite enjoyed it but dreamed about giant man eating spiders on my bed. When I woke up I realised I am in Asia, so the dream wasn't so far fetched.

Hanging around in Had rin the 'Party capital' of Koh Phangan. It's just like ibiza or something, pretty lame, although I did find a bar that did a passable pizza (I'm kinda sick of eating rice) and not only had old school, but Starsky and Hutch AND Zoolander on the video, so rather than talk to actual people I watched a couple of movies.


And it was good.

Not only a squat toilet...

But the shower is a big bucket of water with a smaller one to sluice water over yourself with! Heh! I wanted basic and I got it.

It's the black moon party tonight... I think it's a totally trance affair. But. I'm gonna go and see what's up. I'm a touch bored with playing gameboy in my hammock till bedtime. Haven't really met anyone here yet, but a few people from my travels are coming over the next 10 days or so and there's always a chance of chatting to some wild eyed hippies at the black moon party!



hooray.

There was a time in my life where a trance party would have been my flipping life blood. Let's hope I don't go back there.

Now done about fifteen pages of my comic strip and it's getting worse, much worse.

Off to buy some homely touches for my bungalow on stilts like some mosquito coils.

gaters.

The quiet life.

I'm moving from the aptly named green peace. I'm the only guest at the guesthouse and last night an entire colony of ants decided it was a smart move to try and make a home underneath my pillow. An epic battle ensued and I'm happy to say I prevailed. Not before getting bitten a few dozen times. The buggers.

I'm moving tomorrow to a place called Boom's cafe it's two pounds a night and is in a tiny little beach with hammocks and palm trees and such. It seems very nice. Only one problem... the only toilets are squat toilets. I can cope with that, the only problem is I have to get completely undressed to use them, at the moment I'm not so au fait with the subtleties of squat toilet usage.

Been burning around the island on a beauty of a honda dream. midnight blue and 125ccs it truly is a DREAM machine.

Just got caught ina little downpour and now it's cleared up so I can get back on my steel horse and pretend I'm in Akira or something...

Heesy now.

the quiet life.

Do it hard and do it fast.

Just finished a mammoth 36 hour mission from Bangkok to Had yai, then to Surat hani then to ko Phangan. Didn't sleep much but had to get my passport stamped. It was cool I visited malaysia, for a total of the 30 seconds it takes to walk from entries to departures, but I was there, lovely country, can't fault it. :)

In Ko Phangan in a place called greenpeace. It's very quiet.. perhaps too quiet. I'll stay a few days then see what else there is around.

Got drunk on the nightboat with a chilean and a guy who runs technical and deep diving courses in Ko Tao. It was fun, and I didn't chuck despite 2 meter high waves. I think the whisky balanced it out.

Here until Christmas, so I hope to get brown and toasty.

easy.

Thai pussy...

The king of Thailand is completely revered here. There are huge posters of him everywhere and along the motorway there are giant billboard size photo portraits of him looking suitably regal and austere. As we came back from Kanchanaburi I saw one of him and his wife. He was looking very noble and very serious. His wife (who isn't in many of the portraits - probably for this very reason) was wearing a casual tshirt and had a ridiculous grin of childlike amusement splashed across her face. The reason for her mirth was that she was holding up a very grumpy looking cat with one arm, while the other one had a paw in hand and was making it wave at the camera.

It reminded me of home.

Pop-pickers.

Just looked at the UK top 40 and realised I haven't heard a single one of them. Or even of some of them. Is it because I'm away? Or because I'm old?

who in christ's name is/are babycakes?

Peas.

We're not scaremongering...

I remember now, and it's not important at all. Just wanted o write somewhere so I wouldn't forget. When I was in Tokyo doing all that Karaoke One of the places I went to had 'Idioteque' by Radiohead as one of the songs you could sing.

So I did.

That's it. Apologies and all that.

I may as well say that I stayed in the dirtiest, dankest place in Bangkok last night. The walls were unpainted chipboard and someone had painted 'Fuck off' in big letters across the wall. The room was slightly bigger than a single bed and it had that weird vent thing at the top of the wall like in "the beach".

I expected a bloody map to be slid under my door this morning, but when I woke up all that had happened was a big ball of pubes from the bathroom had rolled under the door. Apparently the Thai government dropped 16 million paper cranes on The Muslims in the south as a message of peace. Funnily enough a spokesperson for the muslims said. 'while we cannot reject ay message of peace, we were hoping for a more political end to the troubles.'

Christ, I'm getting all topical, time to make like a tree and get the hell out ofhere.

Other stuff...

Yesterday on the fullest minibus on earth I saw a full size replica of Stonehenge with elephants walking around it. Didn't have time to take a picture. Also saw a buddha that looked just like Peter Kaye.

Saw two other scooters too;

• Smash
• Junior MASH

Two not so good names for vehicles I think.

There was something really important I wanted to write, but I've forgotten it now.

Catching an 18 hour bus down south to do my visa run today, then I reckon I'll go to koh Panyang and get settled and wait for Christmas or something.

Laters.

Scooters.

Scooters I have spotted:

• Dream
• Wave
• Street
• Best
• Katana
• Vision
• Sky
• Reflex

Yesterday I rode an elephant, went on a raft that sank (not my fault), visited the 'hellfire pass' and rode on a train along the infamous Death railway.

The day before I saw a big fireworks and lightshow at the bridge, it was really good, especially because of the two Australians who were so drunk behind me. They were just hilarious, one of them (and this is God's honest truth) Was wearing some very short cut off denim shorts, an unbuttoned blue flannel shirt (with the arms torn off) and HAD A MULLET! It was brilliant, they kept going on about how all the 'pommies' were good for in the war was whistling, how it was Australians who bombed the bridge and how if it wasn't for the Australians the Germans and Japanese would have won the war no problem. They then went on to slag off the Thais, the British and pretty much everyone else. They sat there drinking beer and smoking when everyone had to rise for the Thai national anthem and then when they played a bit of the 'last post' during the show they stood up and one of them actually started crying at how proud he was of those Anzac boys and how despite the Australians being sent first into Iraq 'not one of them fuckers said thank you.' heheh! They were just brilliant, and made a good alternative commentry to the official one, which was (unfortunatley for me) in Thai.

Today I head back into Bangkok, then I'm buggered if I know where. I need to get my passport stamped so that I can stay in Koh Panyang for a few days after New year's day, but it's either in Cambodia (close but costs $20) or in Malasia (right down the bottom and supposedly a trifle hairy, but free.). I dunno, I think probably the south is best, then move back up the country slightly and get to the island. Pah! It's worse than working, this travelling around lark.

Snozberries.

Kanchanaburi

It's quite nice here, I have a shack on a raft to live on and there is a big garden with plety of hammocks. Got in yesterday and went straight to the 'tiger temple' which is exactly that. A buddhist temple where the monks take in injured and sick tigers from the wild and look after them. It was a very touristy thing, except, they gave us free drinks (an unknown anywhere surely?) and we got to touch and stroke some of the tigers. I had my picture taken with a couple of the tigers and it was absolutley fantastic. The crazy thing about them is that despite their size they are most definitley cats (obvious I know, but they act exactly the same as housecats very weird, considering their size). The Cubs were very VERY cute and the adults were just unbelievable, I never thought I'd have my picture taken with a tiger lying on it's back with it's paw in my hand... Crazy! They definitley weren't sedated either cos they were in quite a boistrous mood for a little while and everyone had to run away for a few minutes. But it was a fantastic thing, definitley another highpoint! I'm just sad that I can't take them home with me, that'll show all the dog lovers out there! :) There was a moment where all these little cute ponies came round the corner and this girl went to pet one and the Abbot of the monastery told her off saying that they were very dangerous 'jungle horses' and no-one should touch them. I laughed until I saw he was being completley serious, all the while having an unleashed fully grown tiger lying at his feet playing with the hem of his robes!

There's a big festival on here to commemorate the anniversary of the destruction of the bridge over the river Kwai and they have a big sound and light show to simulate WWII I'm going to go tonight cos my guesthouse is just over a mile a way and you could hear absolutley everything that was happening and it sounded pretty crazy.

bye.

Yet another one from Fury Eye...

D'you spend all yer time surfing the net or something?

Actually, I've been there, you do.

Suck up a cold G&T for me mate and say hi to everyone.

http://www.cyphic.net/zoomquilt/zoom.htm

Anyways, this is flipping fantastic, check it out. Click and move up and down to zoom in and out.

BTW Bangkok aint so bad this time around, done some shopping and had some nice food, after cambodia and Vietnam it's likethe future! :)