we passed into Thailand through the overland border crossing, which we discovered later was under a bombing attack. nice. our plan was to go strait to ko lanta, i nifty little island next door to ko phi phi. it took a refreshing 24 hours. the bus system in Thailand is cretinous to say the least. you pay for a bus going from A to B, however no one really wants to drive you that far, so what takes place is a sort of shuffling procedure, were you are loaded onto a mini bus taken to someone who ,might condasend to take you part of the way, stopping every few minutes to pick up more travelers each with completely different destinations. you arrive and are made to wait an hour, then into a fresh minibus. this one seems mainly to act as the local postal service, shuttling around town depositing and picking up mysterious packages. the driver deftly fielding questions about why we haven’t left yet, with blank incomprehension. we stop yet again at another travel agent and get into another mini bus. finally we get under way after the driver picks up and drops off a couple of his friends. at some points during this process we were actually further away from our destination than before. very odd. ko lanta was a rather pleasant place. a fantastic beach, easy to get around and some of the best food, all in all perfect, apart from the rather limited nightlife.

we arrived quite late, around 7, and after installing Lucy at a cafe looking after the baggage i went in search of a room. 2 hours later, i was still looking. everywhere was booked, apart from places charging obscene amounts. i was nosing around one place when a tai woman clutching a beer in one hand accosted me. she could see i was nearing the end of my tether and suggested that we should bed down on a nearby grass verge for the night, for as far as she knew every room in ko lanta was booked up. i looked at the verge, it was small and next to an open all hour’s pub on one side and a road on the other. addled by the stress of it all, i not only began to consider sleeping there but i wondered why such a prime spot hadn’t already been taken. trotting the mile or so back to the place i left Lucy i made on last attempt and asked some for accommodation. they said no, but they had heared rumours of rooms at a new place near the road. i hunted this place down and lo, the genial chap at the reception named Pi’ar not only had rooms but was practically giving them away for 300 baht. every one else was putting their prices up as this was high season, but he didn’t see why he should. i agreed that to do so would be the act of a bounder and not a gentleman, which he clearly was. and as we spent time there we came to realize he really was an absolute saint. bending over backwards to make our stay as nice as could be.

there was plenty of fun to be had here. apart from the secret island adventure i have already described, we went snorkeling which was a very fun day out.

fairly shortly after arriving we met up with Tom and Sonne the dutch couple out of the blue and then Carson turned up and thus we could create our own nightlife. firstly one needs a small bucket like those used in toilets throughout Asia to pour water into a loo to make it flush. in this (a clean non toilety one!) you mix, ice, a bottle of finest Sang-som, (an excellent tai whiskey) coke, and red bull syrup, (which i don’t think is legal in most countries) this produces a drink known as a “bucket” one of these is guaranteed to induce a good night. after two or three though, you start acting a bit odd and need to be led away by your friends.

one night we all decided to go out to a party recommended by Pi’ar. we set off strolling along the main road, pretty soon we discover that it was quite far and it was going to take us ages to get there. Tom flagged down a passing truck and we asked if we could get a lift. it turned out to contain a couple of English chaps and was driven by some French men. they were all on their way to some sort of epic club secreted in the center of the island. taking a quick consensus we decided to go with them. of cause we were all heavily into our buckets at this point having had a pre party drink at Pi’ar’s so this may not have been a completely rational decision. we leapt in and shot off at some considerable speed. i suspected that the driver had been drinking. luckily very few people were on the road at this hour. i watched wistfully as we shot past the place we were going to originally. i wondered if we were entirely safe with these random and now that i thought about it rather dodgy looking individuals. i began to visualize worst case scenarios where we would be taken somewhere and robbed. still, there was 5 of us and four of them i consoled myself.
one of the English blokes leant over to me and said in a load whisper: “don’t tell the girls but our driver has only got one eye!”

i forced a grin and clutched tightly to the backboard of the pickup truck, the only thing keeping me from spilling into the road as i was sitting at the back. it gave with startling ease. Carson grabbed my arm and pointed out that the backboard was only fastened by string. this was turning into some sort of nightmare. after about an hour of driving i was quite worried about how we were going to get back after we escaped from these dangerous lunatics. however we arrived at the club in one piece and it turned out to be rather good. unfortunately i was stone cold sober and keen to stay that way so that we could have a chance at getting back, so i didn’t have much fun. i needn’t have worried, taxi men clung to the club like a swarm of attentive flies on a cowpat, so we had no trouble getting back. quite the mis-adventure!

leaving ko lanta was a struggle.

we went to ko phangan crossing Thailand in a flurry of buses.

we spent a restful week in the north. the Padi course was good fun. a lot easier than i thought. once in the water you become quite acustomed to it, nipping about with ease. it feels how i imagine flying feels like.

ill continue this at a later date. we are off to cambodia on the morrow.

belated happy birthday liv and han!

congratulations tom!

will blog soon. 🙂

julio

hail!

in Ko Phangan of The Beach fame. really nice beaches and all that. just come back from the second day of our padi course. really good fun. got all the theory crud out the way and on for two open water dives tomorrow. fingers crossed we may see a whale shark!

may see some tai boxing this evening. i hear its rather brutal.

julio

no sandflies! i imagine there are plentiful moskitoes in the evening though.
considering that there is a airport in krabi, i see no reason why i won’t be coming back to ko lanta. it’s generally agreed by all that this is the best island ever.

my virgin sim works in tailand. i seem to have run out of credit though, and can’t top up from my phone. is there some way of doing it online? —-scratch that i just registered and topped up. its all good.

we went on many walks in the camaron highlands, and got completly lost in dense jungle. good fun though and no leaches.

of minor interest: dave mckean (who drew many a neil gaimain comic) has just illustrated a john cale box set. which is apperently rather nifty. he and gaiman are both big cale fans.

so, ko lanta seems rather nice and we may stay here for a week or somthing. we have vague plans to go to the full moon party on ko panghan and then head to cambodia. the other day Carson turned up out of the blue and a dutch couple we had met in melaka turned up as well! our reunion was merry. yesterday we hired a bunch of bikes and went in search of a hidden secluded beach. after a few mishaps: lucy drove into a fence before we even started, no harm done apart from wrecking the guesthose fence. trying to take a short cut we got lost in a jungle, got scraped to shreds and Carson had a tussle with a spider as big as a plate. we eventually found an idylic beach in the middle of nowhere populated by a wierd old naked guy who kept himself to himself thankfully. on the beach was a wreck of sticks where someone had tried to build a shelter, Tom (the dutch guy) Carson and i decided to rebuild it, to make a hut. we salvaged rope and bamboo, and had to sneak into a bull’s field to harvest palm leaves. the results speak for themselves:

cosy interia

Carson doing something dodgy

Carson and i then fashioned spears from bamboo in the true survivor spirit and went fishing. we had little spear making stuff, so carson sharpened his with a pair of scissors and i had to painstakingly sharpen mine with a bit of correl. finished, our respective spears were pure art. i took to the rocks and him to the sea. i failed to see anything larger than a minnow and carson saw quite a few but broke his spear. today we are going back better equiped. we may have a bonfire and im buying a snorkle to better take on the fish. this is as close to being “the beach” as one could really want.

the cameron highlands.

KL. our table was a murcurial flow of wit and social sophisticated.

Blog 7

The crossing of the singapore-malaysia border was without incident. No one checked our bags or anything. our bus was to a town called Melaka, a traveler place apparently. On arrival it was hard to see why. very little to do apart from potter over to the massive mall and buy stuff or wonder off and look at the old dutch cemetery. Our hostel was really nice with a roof top sitting room where I spent most of my time relaxing and reading. Polished off The Confusion, and read Jurassic park for the eighth time. I now have the final episode in the baroque series: The System of the World. By strange coincidence, every time I finish one volume, I go to a book shop and it just so happens to have nestling on its shelves a copy of the next in the series, and no others!

So we faffed around in Melaka for while. One night we met up with a jolly Canadian chap called Carson and him being the right sort we had a few drinks and played cards until four in the morning. Impossibly he won at gin rummy following the biggest come back in the world of cards. It had got to the point when Lucy and I were openly jeering at his efforts, Lucy more so as she was winning at that point. In addition she was refusing to add up his minus points as they were so numerous. The upshot of this evening was that we decided to head to Kuala Lumpa with Carson and see what it was like.

K.L, as we travelers call it, is quite similar to Singapore but less expensive and dirtier. We decided to stay in china town again. There were lots of hostels to choose from, but Carson having been here before seemed to know his way around. The one he went to last time was pretty bad he said so we were on no account to go to that one. The first place we went to, the door handle was hanging on by a scrap of rust, and none of us were entirely comfortable with that so we moved on. The next one seemed all right, so we nabbed a three person room. Belatedly Carson recalled that this was the one he had said earlier we should on no account stay in. it seems he had checked out a bit late and they had charged him for another day. There had been an argument and I assume harsh words were said. Anyway they seemed not to recognize him so we stayed. What followed was five nights of pretty comprehensive drinking. Lucy and I had to have a break in the middle, but Carson was immune to the after effects of drinking and carried on constantly. A typical day was this: get up at an unknown time. Possibly in the morning more likely in the afternoon. Our room had no window and it was more like a concrete cell than anything else, letting in no natural light. I would wake up to the dull pallid light coming from the corridor and idly wonder if it was 9 in the morning of five in the afternoon. It barely mattered. Food was easily accessible, as the streets were stiff with restaurants all trying to hustle you into their place and not their competitors. Food was generally pretty nice although hygiene standard was brought into question when at each meal Carson or Lucy would find something in their food. A rogue hair perhaps or a king prawn whisker and even on one occasion a dead maggot! I either had nothing in my food or I ate all my hairs and suchlike without noticing. After brunch or lunch would be a period of rest, after the tiresome moment of having to get up. On some days we went to the Petronus towers which were pretty impressive. The mall at its base was even more impressive in its size. I bought some books. (One was The Prestige, quite different from the film and very good.) After wondering around china town for the rest of the day, we would relocate at the hostel and plan our evening. Beer was expensive so we went to a Chinese liquor shop and buy a bottle or two of spirit. Sometimes it was whiskey and other times it was rum or vodka. It was ridiculously cheap. Then to a seven eleven (like a one stop or co-op) and purchased some coke. Back at the hostel we had a little party in our room as we were not aloud to take our own drinks up to the roof top lounge. So we listened to music on our speakers (yes! I finally used them! justifying both there expence and weight in one moment.)

After drinking our drinks and becoming reasonably sozzled we went to the reggae bar down the street. Quite a neat place decked out in red yellow and green and having about 87 pictures of the bob Marley on the wall. It surprisingly played no reggae at all.

After exhausting the potential of that place we would grab a cab and head to the clubs. Sometimes you had to charge and sometimes not, this was based on the phases of the moon or some nonsense. Much fun was had by all.

I did a certain amount of dancing.

One time we where sitting in the outside patio of the club minding our own business and supping a drink or two. Opposite us on the other street was a different club, called the beach club, which we had decided against as it charged to get in. quite fortunate as it turned out. Both clubs are open faced with a small fence stopping people from strolling in of the pavement. From where we were sitting you could see right across the street and into the other club. They seemed to be fuller and to be having slightly more fun that we were.

Suddenly there was a scream and a bunch of people were running across the street away from the beach club. I spotted someone exiting the club, reeling and flailing at the air. I said something strikingly witty. Perhaps “he’s had a bit to much!” or “ha-ha, look at him!” followed by me pointing vigorously in case anyone missed him. The man was quite drunk and in some way very angry at the world in general and the club he just exited in particular. He picked one of those pole things that are used to make temporary queues, its pretty heavy so it took him a few tries, then using it as some sort of club began to physically attack the beach club, smashing it into signs and tables, sending glasses smashing into the street. No one seemed to be stopping him; in fact no one wanted to go near him. People were pouring out of the club at this point and I could see why. Three men came out of the club wielding two foot machetes. They too set about the decor of the place. There was a lot of machete waving, shouting and frenzied attacks on inanimate objects. One guy in particular was determined to take down an entire palm tree on his own. We sat and watched this from the other side of the street, like it was an elaborate play. The full seriousness of it took a while to sink in. I wondered why the police hadn’t turned up, then as it seemed to hot up across the street, whether I could block a machete with my arm. Probably not. We discussed the best exits, Carson working as a security guard once, had a knack for that sort of thing. As it happens the lunatics with the machetes got into a car and sped off, we carried on having a good time.

For some reason the rest of the hostel took a dislike to us. No idea why! We left the hostel before 10pm thus taking our noise with us and arrived back so drunk that we went immediately to sleep.
We reasoned that it was because we were having so much fun, and they could hear our happy laughter, yet they were too embarrassed to join in and thus became jealous. It’s the only rational explanation.

This sort of decadence could last forever, we decided to head on to the Camaron Highlands. Parting ways with Carson, though I suspect we will see him again, we got on yet another bus.

Four hours to the highlands. Having gone out the previous night I felt little worse for wear, I needed sleep. So I hunkered down in my tiny seat and tried to snooze. I was awoken from an interesting dream, by an explosion. I sat up in my seat flailing and jabbering. There was a crunching sound beneath me. Seeing my consternation a Malaysian guy seated nearby explained that we head just experienced a “bad” puncture. This was an understatement it had sounded as if the tire had been blown off. We stopped on the lay by and the driver got out to have a look. Apparently satisfied that we were roadworthy he drove off again. What followed was 30 minutes of a bus trying to rip itself apart. A piece of wheel was repeatedly smashing into the underside of the bus as we drove. As it was going on right under me I decided to move. An Indian guy was unconcerned, perhaps he was used to it, but I watched as the flooring under him lifted up a few inches each time the chunk of wheel whipped into it.

We eventually stopped and had the tire changed, which was nice as I was getting a little concerned.

sending this from ko lanta, a very nice island next to ko phi phi. we are considering taking a Padi course here as the diving is meant to be pretty good.

the highlands were nice, with many walks in tame jungle in the offing.

now im just off to plunge into the crystal waters as i am a tad warm!

love julio