Feb 2008

Hello all! Been a while! - We've mainy been chilling out (what a suprise). It's good - we do very little and spend very little. Can't be a bad thing. We've explored a little more and found a free Wi-Fi cafe up the road. I fixed their wireless network for them so the lady owner is a major fan now. She brought me out her cell phone the other day to fix - she's got me sussed. It's been useful and gave us the chance to Skype Mum & Dad and Steve. It also gives me somewhere to play poker without constantly getting disconnected. I went up the other day and managed to win enough to cover our rent for four days :-)

I can't get access to any of my poker funds though. I accessed my online poker "bank account" and got immediately suspended for trying to access it in Thailand - a banned country. Marvelous - my poker winnings all locked up until we get to China. The support people were infuriating - I explained that we are travelling for several years and they kept saying "so, you've moved to Thailand then?" - nope! - "So you don't live in London any more?" - YES we do! etc etc. Futile. Ahh well - at least I'm winning :-)

We found a shortcut along the beach to the wi-fi cafe which ends with us walking through quite a poor suburban area. We spotted a communal outside toilet which is the exact polar opposite of private!

Bear in mind that's a "squat" loo too - you don't sit down on it. You get the picture!

Still loving our accomodation. We've got on top of the wildlife issues now. I'm still a little twitchy in bed at night but we seem to be OK and we don't run at the sight of bugs. Saying that, we have a resident woo-woo bird that lives in a coconut tree above us (K called them woo-woo birds as she knows them from HongKong and they constantly go "woo woo"). Their woo-woo's escalate in pitch and ferrocity until it seems like they should explode in a ball of feathers. But they don't , they just start again. The one that lives above us wakes up at about 5am. I'm getting some earplugs. I've been woken every single morning. There is also a bird that sounds exactly like our old alarm clock, and another one that sounds like a burglar alarm. Oh, and one that makes "computer" noises. No other way to describe it really.

We also have a sand crab in the bathroom, it's dug a hole in the floor round the shower. We've never seen it but we know the signs. Hole, large pile of sand. The pile of sand has progressively got bigger to the point we think we may actually have a sand lobster instead. There is so much sand I actaully checked the outside of the wall to see if he's managed to "get out". No signs of that yet.

It's so relaxed here, yet funny little things happen here and there you don't expect. I was lying in my hammock one afternoon, soaking up the sun. Our resort was basially empty. No one around. Then funky house music started coming from the bar area and we were sure it was being mixed on decks live. I wandered over to the bar and discovered a small DJ booth I'd never noticed before and Lap, one of the staff here, was donning his "cans" and mixing up some mildly cheesy music with a grin on his face. Didn't really expect that.

Kirstin spends a fair amount of time searching for waxing salons. They don't seem to keen on it here and we can't figure out why. Still, it keeps her entertained. I'm saving my next haircut until I absolutley have to.

We did what's called a "Visa Run" yesterday. Basically our visas run out a week after Matt and Justin arrive tomorrow so we payed £20 each and got an aircon minivan down to the Malaysian border. Our driver, a hobbling Thai, was drinking Red Bull and popping caffeine tablets at 7am when he picked us up. Not a good sign. We reckon he hadn't slept the previous night. So off we zoomed (it's a 12 hour round trip including ferry crossings and the actual visa part) with terrible DVD movies playing. When we approached the Malay border we drove through a 1/2 mile of street market that is there purely to feed off the visa tourist market. It's a surreal experience. You go to a booth, get stamped out of Thailand, then cross the border, stamp into Malaysia, then about turn 180 degrees and immediatly stamp out of Malaysia at a window right next to the one you stamp in. Then you walk back into Thailand and stamp back in again and get a new 30 day visa exemption. The whole process takes about 30 minutes. As always, one of the police stopped me and examined my passport and I got all the usual questions....

"You from London?", "yes", "you know David Beckham". "no", "you Roger?", "yes", "you Roger Moore!", "haha, yes, that's right, I'm Mr Bond". They all do this. But this time he added a twist when he looked at my passport photo...."you Mr Bean!" - haha - git.

This is the border - you can't see obviously, but the market is behind. I had a choice of border or market pics and well, a marked is just a market.

So with the visas renewed we jumped back in the minivan and headed off back to "home". We were supposed to stop at Tescos in a large town (Trang) so we could stock up on UK things like wine and also... a KFC!!! - when I mentioned it, one of the people in the van moaned "some of us have to work tomorrow" - it turned out 3 or 4 of our fellow passengers were working the season on the Island and could not bear to add 30 mins to a 12 hour day. For pete's sake. 12 bloody hours and they can't wait for 30 mins. This turned out to be the least of our worries. (p.s. they were happy to hold us up with fag breaks!)....

About an hour or two into the return journey one of the girls in the van told me with great alarm that the driver was falling asleep. Sure enough, looking at him in the mirror I saw him constantly blinking and then slowly closing his eyes, then nodding down, then waking with a startled look, then repeating this. We both agreed this needed to be dealt with BEFORE he crashed so I called forward to a German chap at the front who spoke Thai and asked if he could ask the driver if he was OK, and that I'd be happy to take over the driving. This German chap was the same chap who protested at the KFC stop, looking at me with great distain. He refused to help , telling me that interfering with a Thai chap's work was offensive to them. "I don't give a F**@! who is offended - our lives are at risk!" - he still refused to help and didn't even bother putting his seatbelt on. In fact, to our amazement, only three of us put our belts on - bear in mind he's doing up to a ton on bumpy roads. People can be incredibly thick in an attempt to be "cool".

At this stage I shouted at the driver, "STOP NOW! - you are not awake". He refused and said he was OK. We got him to pull into the next service station and bought him more Red Bull, and I moved to the passenger seat and spent the rest of the 4 hour drive looking him in the eye and occasionally taking to him and moving my arms about to catch his attention, all the while being prepared to grab the wheel and knock it into neutral should he drop off. Not the most relaxing journey.

We never stopped for shopping and KFC - we just wanted to get back alive! - bloody idiot passengers. I still can't believe how many people are prepared to "see what happens" rather than stand up and be vocal.

Anyhow (deep breath) - all sorted now! - next time we are hiring our own vehicle.

Did I mention we get island-wide power cuts? Sitting under candlelight right now. Hope it does not last - all the water stops without power so we can't flush the loos, and no showers - in this humidity.

..back - it's the next morning now. K went out with some girls staying here to a beach party last night. Got back at 4am tsk! :-) - I bailed out - I've got a cold (how the hell do you get a cold here!?!). She's just woken up with a mega hangover and my cold.

The Thais round here are really into their songbirds. As I mentioned before the owner, Kun, had lots of song birds in cages dotted around the "resort" and yesterday we found out why. They compete with all the other bird owners each monday. It's very bizarre. We went to see it hapenning - he came 2nd out of 100 last week so was hoping for his first win this time.

They hang all the bird cages on three rows of lines, and then a man with a whistle, a bucket of water, and a pot with a hole in it blows his whistle. The jusdges then watch the birds, one at a time, and mark on their score card how many times they sing. The whistle-man puts the pot with a hole in it in a bucket of water and when it sinks then that's his cue to blow the whistle again. Between each whistle blow your bird must sing 8 times or you are out. They have two heats. The 1st lasts about 40 mins and the second round for the finalists lasts anything up to 3 hours depending on how stiff the competition is. You see all the owners encouraging their birds to sing with a plethora of sounds, body signals, etc. It's quite fascinating. Kun didn't make the final this time, his best bird is growing new feathers so he had to use one of his "backups".

Kun and Lap on a not so successful Bird singing day.

It was a good experience doing something with the locals and it was kinda nice that a fair few Thais there recognised us from when they come here to play football so we felt very welcome. The "taxi" driver was also rather suprised we wanted to go to the song bird competition. They clearly don't get much tourist interest. Then again, it's not much of a spectator sport :-)

We found a movie on their computer here of the Tsunami hitting where we are staying. It's fascinating to watch. The sea rushes sideways along the beach in a manner much like the Severn Bulge - but carrying fishing boats and debris. Everyone is standing on the shore line watching, then it comes back, then all of a sudden it comes inwards, decimating three bungalows and any other things in it's path. The wave was only a metre high at the most but it's relentless nature gave it it's destructive power. I have a copy but I won't upload it until I've checked with Kun that he's hapy for me to do that. It even has a shot of him running like hell with the wave behind him.

Just been on the phone to Matt. He and Justin are at Bangkok Airport and will be with us early this afternoon. We've organised a BBQ and some fireworks for their arrival.

Wil sign off now. Here is a little pic of the spider I mentioned in the last post. Notice her lovely sack of eggs. Euchhh!

Oh yeah - also, below should be a travel map of our journey so far....

Well, life ambles past us with not too much excitement to report – though we’ve been having a fun battle with the bugs.

We moved rooms a week ago – our bungalow was prebooked by other people – we moved to a larger one but back in the woods a bit and away from the beach. The problems started the night we moved in. I awoke to the unmistakable feeling of being crawled over and found a cockroach in my hand! When we got up to get rid of it we found 3 or 4 more scuttling round the room. I nuked them. When we got up in the morning there were yet more, plus a million mozzies.

We thoroughly sprayed the room but it continued. We eventually got the owner to sort it out and the problem largely evaporated, but we missed our sea front views so we’ve moved forward again and are ensconced in our hammocks for most of the days.

All this bug action (not forgetting I got attacked by a centipede in bed) has left us both rather “twitchy” – if one of us so much as brushes against anything suspicious at night (no sniggers please) we are awake with a jolt. On top of this, Kirtsin spotted a huge spider in our room yesterday but didn’t tell me for fear of seeing me run for the hills screaming. She had a hard time sleeping as you can guess but he’d seemingly left the room in the morning so she didn’t say anything – that is until we found it in the bathroom. It’s the size of a hand ! with a large egg sack attached! – we go the staff to remove it.

So now we are tentatively eying up sealed aircon rooms nearby – with free wi-fi! – we like it too much here to leave, but we may move there for maybe a few days, just to get some decent sleep.

We hired a scooter last week and rode right round the island having a good old explore. We stumbled across the “fish farm” and an enthusiastic guy took 50baht from us each (80p) and walked us to the corner of a large pond and basically told us they grow prawns,( which he showed us a net with about 8 in), it takes a lot of food to feed them, and in 6 months they’d all be very wealthy. And that was it. I had to ask him to walk us round the pond. That was the highlight. Fun nonetheless : - )

We cruised round the rest of the island, finding odd little bars here and there, one with a spectacular vista over a bay and out to sea.

The staff here, plus a bunch of their friends from another operation all meet here and play football for 40 minutes every day at about 4pm. It’s fun to watch in the comfort of a hammock. I decided to take a few “sports” shots. I actually got a few good ones with people in the air, and heading the ball etc, but the one below is only there because it tells a tale…………

………That ball bounced up and hit the camera dead on in the middle! As I saw it getting larger in the viewfinder it instantly dawned on me it was getting far too big far too quickly so I put my hand out and partially deflected it. Camera survives – phew.

Other than that, we are just bumbling around, walking down the beach trying the different bars – had a BBQ in our table last night in a French restaurant on the beach. Devine fillet beef on the BBQ – and all for £5 plus booze.

This is the kinda place we have to slum it in – but we manage.

This lifestyle is suiting me : - )

Oh - I've added a few pictures and a movie to http://s97.photobucket.com/albums/l235/dodgey99/Thailand%202008/

Yo! Thought I’d do a small update after about a week or so of doing very little :-)

We have actually done a couple of things. We went to the “monkey school” on the island, where apparently they train monkeys, for what purpose we weren’t sure. We found out. They train them to stand with makeup on holding a parasol looking like a Chinese lady, cycling about on a tricycle, or releasing coconuts from ropes. It was entertaining but we were too uncomfortable that they were all on choke chains and got a firm tug when then didn’t behave as demanded. It was odd, you could look at their eyes and they looked like shy little people. There were lots of baby monkeys (all chained to posts) who you could go and play with. We declined making contact – neither of us have had rabies jabs and it’s a risk we are not prepared to take, no matter how much assurance is given.

The other thing, well, it was just me. I went for a hair cut. I wandered about 1km down the road and found a lady who cuts hair, in her garage. 80 Baht (£1.30) later I was clean cut. She was terrifying. She got a cut-throat razor our at the end – not uncommon, this has happened to me in the more old fashioned barbers in London. Not only did she use it to doe the back of my neck etc, she did my ears (cutting one), then MY CHEEKS! – I could not say a word – she’d have cut me a new mouth. When I say my cheeks, I don’t mean like a normal shave, I mean my cheeks – right under my eyes. I had a few days stubble growth so she sculpted me the George Michael look. I shaved as soon as I got back to the bungalow.

We have got well and truly into the way of nature. We have to! The bungalows are in no way sealed from the outside world, in fact, they are pretty much open. This is our shower room, and as you can see, making the roof meet the walls was clearly not a priority.

… As you can imagine, we get visitors from all walks of nature. On the third night, I was part-dreaming about jellyfish stings on my neck and shoulders – getting repeatedly stung sharply all over. I was brushing away imaginary tentacles when I woke up to the certainty that I’d just actually brushed off something very real, solid, and alive. I switched on the torch and a long centipede scuttled under my pillow. I had rolled onto it in my sleep and it was biting me all over – yuck!!

After we’d managed to brush it off the bed (it promptly ran under the mattress – great) a huge cockroach ran over our mosquito net. We were at one with nature.

We’ve started to gather a collection of frogs too. It started with one in the bedroom a few days ago. We left it in a corner assuming it would go back the way it came, wherever that was. We found 2 more yesterday in the bathroom – making a total of three in there now. We are not sure if they come and go, or they are getting in and getting stuck. We have decided to monitor the number of frogs and if the bathroom population increases any more we might have to act.

Make no mistake, we don’t mind frogs. They just sit there looking frightened and unsure what to do. The problem is they are snake food, and that is making my wife feel rather edgy.

I put my trunks on the other day and a cockroach fell out of them onto the floor. Nice.

I have a huge can of “kill-all” bug spray now. Whilst we are at one with nature, we are also at war.

Last night we awoke to a lot of sound coming from the bathroom. The sound of something large on the toilet lid – enough weight to make the cistern make clanking sounds as it rocked, and a lot of rustling. There is no door between us and the bathroom.

All the frogs are gone. We guess it was a large frog-eating “something”. Maybe a lizard. We have a small one that lives in the roof – we know because twice now he’s lost his footing and slid off onto the floor by our feet. We guess he has a larger father.

Coconuts are dangerous. Daily we witness one or two falling from about 40ft up. They’d kill you! I heard the ominous crackling sound of one breaking free on my way from the bungalow to the bar in the dark – I put my hands over my head and ran like hell – but were to run? Bloody trees everywhere!

Woke up yesterday to see the solution at hand. All we could hear was the sound of coconuts raining down on the ground. A lad had shimmied the 40ft-odd up the trees and was breaking all the ripe ones free. He just used a piece of rag tied to his ankles as a kind of “U” grip. No doubt you’ve seen this on the Discovery channel as we have before. Very risky job, and boy did he take is time carefully coming down each tree.

(If you look closely you can see the lad in a red shirt at the top)

I never thought it would happen, but I’ve been wearing a Kaftan! – Kirstin’s no less. It was an odd moment when I realised that I was going through my Wife’s wardrobe for something cool to wear. I can see why now – the perfect thing for hot sticky nights.

(It had to happen)

Talking of fashion disasters – I had a fun one on the Koh Simillian Islands. When we got onto the speedboat to go to the islands we had to put all our shoes in a bin bag (no shoes on the boat thanks). Once we had settled on the main camping island we were given the bag to get our shoes back. No probs – mine are unique so it was easy to rifle through and find them.

24 Hours later I went to put them on. Left foot, fine, right foot – Hmmm – not right. Must have put it on my left foot. Swap, still the same problem. Odd – maybe I broke one? Then it hits me. I now have two left shoes :-(

Kirstin is looking at my commotion and wondering what’s wrong with my shoes. Then she starts laughing uncontrollably. Crying.

I’m now stuck with two left shoes for the rest of the trip – and you needed shoes there. Two shoes.

(yep – I walked like this for a day and a half)

When the rest of our boat group arrived for dinner I looked at everyone’s feet. It became an obsession. No one had shoes like mine, and certainly no one was walking round with two right feet. One person had no shoes on at all. I decided this was my best chance to solve the mystery.

“Have you got shoes like mine?”, I asked, “YEAH! – you got my shoes!!” - , “Um, nope, I have one of your shoes – where are yours?”, “I left them in the bag by mistake and they went back to the mainland”. I walked off at this stage (well, hobbled off). Much rather have two left shoes that none at all.

We were reunited with our corresponding odd shoes when we went back to the mainland. The Thai chap in charge of lost property was totally bemused as to why I arrived with two shoes and took a “Third” from the bag – he wanted a copy of my passport and everything. Fortunately my opposing shoe-mate arrived and the matter was settled, though I don’t think the Thai chap was any the wiser.

I’ll sign off now. I’m typing as I watch our resident Alcy sip his “morning beer”. He gets up at 8am every morning, sits in the same chair, and drinks beer until midnight – when he is totally pissed but still able to order more beers. Often the manager, Kun, walks him to bed, especially when his language starts getting blue. He must be a very profitable customer. I was going to post a pic of him in the morning having breakfast beers but I might get sued!

Anyhow, I’ll leave you now, as K does her daily Yoga.

R&K