Lesson number 113; Never trust a hippy.

Was at the "THC" Rooftop bar with Emma last night. (terrible name, but quite a nice place. Lots of DJ Shadow and Royksopp and beanbags... Not to mention nice cheap vodka tonics. Not my drink of choice, but when the price is low anything's a winner for me!)

It was full of your traditional 'traveller' types, all bearded and wearing breathable synthetic fibres, or dreadlocked and haggard looking. I think they had just got back from a trek or something, but that doesn't really matter, when we went to leave, someone had stolen my shoes! I'm not too bothered because they were cheap as anything, but now all I have are some 50p rubber flip flops, which means I have to go out and buy some shoes. Also they had climbed up mounains in vietnam and temples in Cambodia as well as boogied till dawn on Koh Phangan.


Next time you have a drink, please pour a little on the ground for my British knights, they were truly noble shoes.

Chaing Mai

Arrived in Thailand's second largest city yesterday. It's actually more like a big town, I think the population is 500,000 which is quite a big drop off from the 6 million or so that live in Bangkok. I'm very pleased that prices are a little cheaper here and that there isn't that much stuff to buy. Hired bikes yesterday and went for a drive around the city (much different from the countryside stuff.) i's all good and today Cody, Emma and I went to the 'famous' Jungle bungee thing and I had my first bungee jump, It was absolutley amazing, totally not the sort of thing I would normally do, but I'm so glad I did it. Luckily I didn't get whiplash and my retinas remain intact! I would love to do it again, but I think I will have to wait til I'm back in the world and try it in the alps or at Reading Festival or something.

Emma and I handed our passports in to get our Laos visas too, I think we're going to head up to a little mpountain town called Pai for a week or so, then the rough date for going to Laos is the5th of February. It's a two day slow boat journey on the mekong, so I'll be listening to some sixties music and pretending I'm in Platoon ONCE AGAIN on this trip!

Umm... Oh yeah, put on a little weight from all the restaurant food since I've been away I reckon. Haven't once had the "bangkok belly" which in a way is a disappointment cos I wanted to be all svelte and tanned for my return. Have decided that now is the time to do something about it and so only ate half my sirlojn steak sandwhich for breakfast! :) I think the binge drinking isn't helping eithe, so I'll have to start drinking girlie drinks. (cutting down on the booze is, of couse, NOT an option! Just kidding!)

Oh yeah, Bought some great albums last time I was in Bangkok, which were:

Amon Tobin - Supermodified
Robust - Potholes in my molecules
The Kasabian album
The black keys album
The vines - Winning days

That's it.

Nice one.

Burmese 'adventures'

Got a lot to cover here, so please excuse me if I just do a series of highlights and stuff.

• So everyone should already know about the government firewalls in place there. In fact, after I posted here and signed up to that new Email account (which is not in use I hasten to add.) they blocked both the sites, despite me deleting the history and stuff. I guess they're pretty on top when it comes to security.
• And this is because the government controlling Burma (or Myanmar) is a proper no holds barred military dictatorship that flexes it muscles controlling almost every aspect of Burmese people's lives.
• Of course being tourists we didn't see too much of it, cos that would ruing their already tarnished inmage, so we were only allowed to visit a handful of places (most charging a fee in dollars to get in) and some entire regions were out of bounds because the government wasn't entirely in control due to freedomfighters rebels and proper serious stuff like that.
• One very small example of the regime is the fact that children who have finished school (some only have 3 years of schooling) are put to work building roads bridges and public buildings, which is fucking dark. It reminded me (and I apologise for once again using an entertainment medium to describe something far from... ) of the second Indiana Jones movie with all the little kids put to work in the mines... truly nasty.
• We hired a car and driver to take us on a whistlestop tour of Burma, it was a little more expensive than taking public transport, but for one we weren't giving our money directly to the government and we didn't have that much time and the roads were pretty bad and the public transport system was more than a little antiquated.
• We saw a load of cool sites including:
• THE AMAZING GOLDEN ROCK! This is an important Buddhist site, apparently whilst visiting Burma, Buddha spotted this rock that was about to topple off the side of a mountain (it's a big rock) so he plucked a hair from his head and placed it on one side of the rock thus balancing it out. It's remained there ever since and is a really nice place, despite the ride in the back of a big flatbed with boards across and the walk up pretty steep roads.
• INLE LAKE! This is a big lake where the locals have decided rather than living next to the lake it's better to live on top of it. There's a largish town there which resembles a 'wild west' version of vencice, all the restaurants and bars face directly out into the water and all the buildings are on stilts. It was a brilliant place, they had giant tomato gardens on the water (hydroponics anyone?) and an amazing buddhist monastery where they had about twenty cats and the abbot has trained them to jump through a little hoop. It's pretty amazing seeing it and there are always loads of buddhist pilgrims who come to see it. My mum would've absolutley loved it. Also at Inle (because of the great tomatoes)they have fantastic Italian restaurants (I had Gnocchi) which has priobably directly led to me seeing more Italians in the crippled Junta that is Burma than in the whole rest of SE Asia so far.
• BIG BUDDHAS! All over the place lying down, sitting, standing up.... Everywhere, some were absolutley massive as well. We wentto a cave that contained something ridiculous like 9000 golden buddhas and were totally non fazed because by that point we had definitley reached Buddha saturation.
• STUPAS! And come to think of it, PAGODAS! All over Burma on every hill top and nestled in the woods and plains are these temple thingies, very pretty and exotic and definitley lends a proper exotic air to the place. (especially when everyone lights up their bonfires at dusk)
• KALAW! Little mountain town that has the greatest Napalise food and brilliant little hikes around the place. Was like a little version of Sapa in Vietnam but as it would have been in the fifties or something. It was quiet and picturesque (British colonial cottages and village greens lent the place a very idyllic English countryside feel.)
• BAGON! Burma's version of Angkor Wat... It was absolutley breathtaking. There are thousands of little temples and Stupas of a nine mile area, all in various different states of disrepair, unfortunatley I had broken one of my camera's memory cards, so couldn't take as many pictures as I wanted. It was absolutley brilliant though.

Some quick memories:

• Driving around the Burmese countryside listening to the pixies, Jay Z, The killers and Underworld on our driver's Jerry rigged but booming In Car Entertainment System.
• Sitting on top of a temple waiting for sunset when suddenly we hear DJ Shadow echoing out from somewhere. Look down and it's AR (the driver) who's opened all the doors and boot to rinse out his system like he's at MAX POWER or something.
• Playing 'two for flinching' for about 8 days straight.
• Beating everyone at Shithead almost constantly.
• The owner of one hotel telling us that we could stay with him for as long as we wanted for free if we got hold of some guns for him.
• scrambled egg for breakfast every single day.
• The torture that is Burmese massage.
• The Vegas in tents festival at the Golden rock. Dunno it's proper name but it was entirely based around weird medieval gambling games... Quick now... What are you going to bet on? Catfish or Crayfish?

I could go on and will probably think of some more things, but hope this gave you a little taste of my Burmese holiday?

Sorry about the delay in posting.

I was trying to download a program so that I ould chuck some pictures up here, but alas. It wasn't to be. Also my brother has got me running round Bangkok trying to find him various cheap items of clothing so I haven't had too much time to get online.

Here I am though... At last.

Better write some stuff about Myanmar, I don't really know where to start but I'll give it a go...

Gonna post it seperately, so chances are you've already read it cos it's above this one.

Sorry about that.

And everything else too I suppose. Especially if you didn't enjoy it.

Soz.

Socked it to the man.

Although they blocked my email site, I've signed up to one that is operational for the time being.

The address is :

sevenape@mail2world.com

Write me from the free world!

If I don't reply it might be cos they found a email site that we can use and have blocked it.

I'll try to update on here as much as possible.

It's great... I feel like James Bond or something.

Hello from juntaland

Hello everybody, cannot send emails as I thought. Can access this though, at a very high price.

It's a weird country. Saw a dog with two broken legs walking on it's front paws.

very safe for us, but did have people listening at our hotel room this morning when we were discussing our travel plans. Certainly doesn't feel particularly free.

Hiring a car and driver to take us around the country for the next twelve days. Should be fun... a proper road trip!

It's all good. everyone is friendly and there are proper toilets and cans of coke and all that other garbage.

Will tell more at another date...

The last post.

This will probably be the last post for a couple of weeks.

Leaving Bangkok first thing tomorrow for Burma. I heard that internet IS available in Burma but is prohibitively expensive. I'll have to check it out for myself when I get there. Changed $500 for the trip just in case. I doubt I'll need half that for 2 weeks but I can use it in Laos later on anyway so it's all good. Can't believe that it's just over 250 pounds, got it in small denominations so I feel like scrooge mc duck or something, my friend Emma got $100 in ones just in case and that looked even more impressive. We're going to chuck it around the hotel room later and act like bank robbers.

I was going to upload some pictures today but haven't had time. Been running around buying crap for my brother and then posting it off and collecting passports and plane tickets and stuff for tomorrow. It's hectic but good fun. It feels good to be heading off somewhere, especially with Emma and Cody. Met them in Vietnam in November and we all met up in Koh Phangan and have kind of decided to stick together for a while. Cody has already been to Laos so I doubt he'll come with us there which is a pity. On a different note Emma's been playing pool since she was two or something and the tables are free out here in Asia she said she'll school me so when I get back to the world I can whip everyone's asses. I won't feel like such a cripple at the pub!

Bought a walkman and about 30 cds yesterday. Got bored of all my minidiscs so now I have some cool new albums to listen to. Nothing too esoteric but the ones I can remember are:

Erland Oye - DJ kicks
The killers album, can't remember the title but heard it a few times while away, it's great.
The Cure - The Cure
The Streets - Grand don't come for free
A couple of Goodie mob albums
The london electricity album which is flippin' brilliant.
An eminem unreleased bootleg
Radiohead - I might be wrong and Com Lag
Jay Z - the black album
Kanye West's album
Dizzeee rascols new one.
Best of Manic street preachers
Best of Underworld
Eminem's new album which is supposed to be rubbish but at a pound I thought I'd try it.
Best of Orbital
DJ Shadow in tune and on time with a dvd too.
A warp mix called play and repeat or something.

And that's all I can remember. The cd's are well moody, only cost a pound each and are a bit hit or miss on the glitchyness but at that price I can't complain.

Right, If anyone wants anything email me cos I'll be back in Thailand in two weeks to finish some shopping before Laos.

See you on the other side.

Bangkok again.

At the end of Koh San road there's a big fence covered with photos and messages for missing people. I'm sorry that I have to use comparison's to movies but it's just like that bit in 28 days later. Computer printouts, scrawled messages an photographs. It's shocking. Especially because such a large proportion of the missing are young children and babies. Still feel impotent about it all. Have given some money but fuck, it just doesn't seem enough.

Saw some BBC news coverage in my guesthouse the other day, it's crazy... I think all of you back in the world are getting a much better picture of what happened here.

heard 2 horrible stories:

• People are sunbathing on the beach in Phuket while the clean up is carrying on around them. It's fair enough I suppose, after all I'm still here on holiday (although not in any disaster zones) But there was this one woman interviewed who said she didn't care because she hadn't lost anybody in the Tsunami...
• A dutch couple tried to dive the coast near Phuket to search for stuff to salvage from the damage. Can't believe that people would be so eager to basically grave rob.

Leaving for Burma on the 7th and will almost definitley be out of phone and email contact for two weeks. I hear the internet access is severely restricted and they don't have phone coverage. Dunno why I'm doing this to myself, after all this is supposed to be a holiday but it seems I just can't get enough morbidity and suffering on this trip.

It should be interesting and Everyone who's been there recommends it, so I would just be kicking myself if I didn't try it. I hear it's very safe for tourists anyway. On the bright side you can deal directly with the locals on the black market which ensures that they are getting some dollars and hard currency always helps in a military dictatorship.