And finally...

Here's some kind of old, peeling, leprous and disturbingly life-like Buddha. Isnt religion fun?

Look, it's the Fairy Washing Up Liquid Buddha

Look, it's the Milky Bar Buddha

Look, here's another Buddha

Aha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!

Found this really funny. I read about this statue in the guide book and had to make a special trip just to see it because if I saw one more serene smiling depiction of Buddha I was going to grab the nearest fire extinguisher and smash his smiling serene face in. This is at Wat Umong, just outside Chang Mai, and it shows Buddha fasting. Smug git still looks annoyingly serene though doesnt he? Incidentally, at Wat Umong I noticed I had been wearing my shorts the wrong way round all day so quickly stripped off in the monastery grounds. Fortunately I was not spotted and therefore did not suffer the wrath of any enraged kung fu monks.
Changed my plans since the last post back to my original plan of getting to Chiang Mai and exploring the North of the country from there. It's much nicer here than in Bangkok, cooler too and the rooms are better value.
Just signed up for a three day trek which will include rafting (Deliverance), caving (The Descent), jungle trekking (Rambo/Tears of the Sun/Apocalypse Now etc.), and elephant-riding (uuum...Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?).
Must buy a hat (can I find a stylish cream-coloured trilby anywhere? Can I hell) and a sarong tomorrow.

Australians can be pretty loud too.

Maybe it's the distances in America and Australia. In their home countries they are all so far away from each other that they have to yell. Then they travel and dont realise they could actually shut the fuck up a bit and still be heard.
Anyway...I've left Bangkok. From now on any day before a travel day will be an alcohol free day. Felt terrible, and it was a modern, air-conditioned train too with a toilet that only made you want to cut your head off a little bit at the thought of using it.
I am currently in New Sukhothai which is a short ride from Old Sukhothai (see what they did there?). Old Sukhothai is the sight of some important ruins and temples. Trouble is, "important" doesnt always translate into "interesting". That pile of rubble you're looking at may be sacred to Thai folk but it means flip all to anyone else. This place was recommended to me buy a couple of people but apart from the two places I have posted photos of its not really up to much. Anyway, from here I should be able to move on to Mae Sot on the Burmese border and from there up country to the hillside trekky areas. I demand some jungle! And dinosuars...lots of dinosaurs.

Aaaargh!!! Just saw my first mosquito!! I'm gonna' die!!

AHA!!!!

On a number of occasions recently I have drunk a lot of beer and got really arse-holed, to the point of losing the end of the evening (not a good idea if you are in strange and hostile territory). Was just sitting outside a bar near my hostel (45 Baht for a large Chang beer, 100 Baht is about 75p) and noticed that Chang beer is 6.4%. That may explain it. Thought I was just out of practice.
My visas have come! I get out of Bangkok tomorrow! Woo Hoo!

Why are Americans so fucking loud?

Not much to add to that really.

Is Royal sweat holy?

As some of you may know, Bhumibol Adulyadej the Great is king of Thailand and is almost universally adored. He is regarded as semi-divine by some and flat-out divine by others. In fact, making disparaging comments about him or his relatives is not only frowned upon, it's actually illegal (he's also one of the richest men in the world with 7 billion or there-abouts in his bank account).
Anyway, there are images of him everywhere. Photos in every guest house and tuk-tuk, huge billboards, shrines at the side of the road etc. Here is a photo I noticed around a few times. You cant see it that clearly but he is sweating his head off and you can see the magnificently backlit bead of sweat hanging off his nose. I cant believe anyone actually said to themselves, "Oh yeah, that's a flattering picture of our beloved Monarch. Let's use that one." Maybe someone used it as a joke and no-one wanted to say anything because he's regarded as so great and beneficent that everything about him is divine whatever it is.
That kind of got me to thinking, does that extend to stuff he excretes? Are his bodily fluids or sweat holier than that of mere mortals? I guess it must be if it comes from him but it can't remain so once it's left his body otherwise all his...shall we say...leavings would have to be gathered up and disposed of in a manner befitting his status. Is it a time thing or a distance thing or both? How long would it have to be outside the royal personage or how far from him would it have to be before it stopped being sacred and reverted to just regular...you know....faecal matter and spit?
Something to think about.

Queen's Gallery

Hello. Went to the Queen's Gallery today. Had to cross a six lane road to get there. The trick would seem to be get a bunch of Thai people in between you and the direction the traffic is coming and cross when they do as many of the motorists seem to regard the traffic light signals as guidelines rather than commands. Anyway, I was walking around this very quiet, very modern, VERY deserted gallery looking at these peculiar works of art and one of the T.V. installations was using some of the music from the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack. Ooooh, nice choice.
Got chatting to a girl a few nights back and we had a (fairly) good natured drunken argument about religion. I said I was an Ontological Pragmatist and she told me I was just an Agnostic who was hedging his bets. What does she know? She had an aversion to sea-food and hated anything with tentacles, labelling them spooky and unnatural so my entirely reasonable and completely healthy fondness for our suckered brethren struck her as most peculiar. Told her about Geoff. She was baffled at best.
Drew a picture of Geoff in the comments book in the gallery. Tee Hee. And don't give me that look, I wrote a nice comment too. About the three Buddha piece actually. It's kind of like Buddha meets Terminator 2.

Man, that is one biiiig Buddha

Managed to find my way to the National Museum today which was okay. The trouble is that it was mainly full of historical stuff about the Thai royal family (who they revere) and lots and lots of depictions of Buddha (who they also revere, but in a sliiightly different way). Now I have no interest in my own royal family let alone anyone else's and really, when you've seen one depiction of Buddha standing, sitting or kneeling in prayer you've seen them all. Would it kill them to shake it up a bit? Here's a statue of Buddha praying, here's one of him sitting cross-legged, here he is on a motorbike, now he's performing an appendectomy on a pole-cat, and here he's depicted having a spud-gun fight with some of the Ray Harryhausen skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts. You get what I'm saying?
After that I went to Wat Pho which is the oldest temple in the city. It was absurdly ornate. Who would have thought that Buddhists could be so ostentatious? I wasn't going to go in to see the famous giant reclining Buddha for the reasons stated above plus it was really crowded in there (it's in a chapel and you cant see it from the outside) but then I thought, it is one of the sights of the city, if not the country and I was glad I did. Not only was he reclining (which made a change) but he was fucking MASSIVE! Photos don't really do the whole thing justice.
The Wat is a centre for traditional medicine and Thai massages were available there. Actually you can get them all over the city but I thought I would go with a place that had more of a stamp of authenticity to it rather than just let some random stranger at the side of the road start yanking my head about. It was quite peculiar lying on a mat between two other people while a small but surprisingly strong Thai girl crushed you body into odd shapes but not entirely unpleasant. I did feel more relaxed afterwards but that only lasted until I left the grounds and walked a hundred yards down the teeming city streets.
After that I strolled down to a pier docking point and caught a river bus back to the area I'm staying in. I have moved on from the place that boasted an occasional piano rendition of a well-known British soap-opera as well as what sounded like an old woman hacking her lungs up at 7am to a place that is even cheaper. Now have the joy of shared shower/bathrooms and a ceiling fan that has no setting between off and a speed that makes it sound like there is a fleet of Huey gunships hovering two feet above the bed. Hope I dont stand up on the bed in my sleep and decapitate myself.
Will switch to a more expensive place for the last couple of nights here in order to wash some clothes, recharge my batteries and recharge some of my batteries.
Blimey, nearly eight o'clock, see ya'.

Good God it is hot

The guest house I'm in has a fan but no air-conditioning and the fan tends to just move the hot air around a bit as opposed to cooling it in some fashion. I have to wait until Thursday until my visas for Lao and Vietnam are ready (Bangkok is the easiest place to get them, you just let a travel company do all the work rather than trek around to embassy's yourself) so I'm stuck here until then. I will be glad to get out of this city as it is so full-on and sticky. Hopefully moving up country it will be cooler or at least there will be outdoors areas where you can sit in the shade and read. Here you either sit in your room which is a bit boring or sit on a street corner where you immediately get accosted by vendors trying to sell you bracelets and tuk-tuk rides and inexplicably giant zippo lighters about 10 inches tall. Not sure why you would want one unless you have some colossal cigarettes to go with it.
Had a pizza today. Felt very guilty, only been here a week and already felt compelled to eat some comfort scoff. Still, everyone knows Thai food is rubbish.

Name's Craig, Daniel Craig

Well it took about half an hours taxi ride to get there but that was the biggest, swishest, fanciest cinema I've ever been in. Also the loudest, I think I have concussion from the gunshots. All in all I give Casino Royale a big thumbs up. Daniel Craig is really good in it, who'd of thought a game of cards could be so tense. He was surprisingly good at the one liners as well as the tough stuff, though its very dryly delivered, none of the raised eye-brow stuff from the Roger Moore era. Felt a bit rough after the film finished so had an early night with a kebab, bottle of tiger beer and The Man With The Golden Gun on T.V. (they're showing all the Bond films in sequence this week).
Oh yeah...um...also went to a temple...saw Buddha...had a spiritual awakening.
But cant be bothered to relate that right now.

Got chatting to a rich, brash American the night before last who turned out to be Canadian so that wasnt so bad. But then I realised that as far as everyone who couldnt tell from his accent that he was Canadian was concerned he was a loud brash American...who I was being seen with. I made my excused and left, particularly after his friend showed up who had a suspiciously Uncle Monty-esque air to him.
Have moved to a cheaper guest-house where a girl I assume to be the daughter of the landlady was practising the Eastenders theme-tune on her piano. I hope she doesnt stay up too late.

A learning curve. A steep learning curve

Got chatting last night to a girl who's name I cant remember. She was very nice and I have a photo of her smoking my pipe (some moisturizer spilt in my pack and got on the black plastic stem and its gone GREEN. What the hell is it doing to our skin?)
Anyway, I learnt a valuable lesson. She was amazingly grateful when I saw her sitting on her own and asked if she wanted company. This lifts a significant amount of strain from the whole talking-to-strangers thing. Eveyone here wants company, even the beautiful get-the-fuck-away-from-me-you-strange-man-with-a-disturbingly-encyclopedic-knowledge-of-herr-Hitler ones.
Drunkenly arranged to meet up again today but think I insisted on an early start which I then missed on account of being hung-over (in this heat this is not pretty). Ah well.
Managed to drag my ass out at about 3pm and made my way to the Bangkok National Gallery. Very nice, some interesting contemporary art which I have some nice photos of, though I will nail my colours to the mast and say that contemporary Thai art is really, really boring.
Will have to decamp to a cheaper hotel tomorrow and give serious thought to moving up country soon. Unless my sums are wrong I've spent about 250 pounds so far and I haven't even had anyone love me long time yet.
You know, this is relevant of absolutely nothing but three people (taxi driver from the airport/one handed girl and friend/last night's girl) have said I look very very young for my age and have been surprised that someone of my tender years is making this lengthy spiritual and emotional journey in search of string.
No joy on that front.
Haven't found a cinema yet either.
This trip is shaping up to be a real bust.

String!!!!!

Thats all I want! Not asking too much surely? Just some ordinary string to hang drying clothes up on? I have strolled through the tourist areas and also gone through the bog-standard market areas. Lighters, wire, plug-sockets, pipe-cleaners, motor-bike parts, radio-transmitters, you name it but no bloody string!
Actually it was a bit weird. I wondered around for hours (classic English behaviour, hottest part of the day, no hat etc. only passed out twice, got insulted by a Thai suit maker for wasting his time after going to his shop at the impossible to refuse behest of the tuk-tuk driver. Tuk-tuk's are great fun but you will always be dragged into a shop somewhere) in what must have been the motor-bike spare-parts district, then the guns and knives area, then bizarrely a street that alternated musical instrument stores with military clothing shops. Lots of shiny boots. Nice.
But no string...or hats. At least not the kind of stylish Panama number I am after. Just loads of floppy sun hats and caps. What am I, some kind of white Western back-packer? I dont think so!
On the plus side I just had my first talk-to-a-total-stanger experience. Two girls from Croydon. One of whom was missing a hand. Didnt ask if she had been travelling in Cambodia. Probably should have done.
Bye

I have arrived

Well here I sit, in an internet cafe/restaurant/bar in Bangkok, sipping a cold Singha beer and watching the world go by. By the world I mean of course the three dinky Thai waitresses. One of the first things I noticed (after the humidity and the smell....its like walking around inside a Turk's stomach) was the preposterous levels of cute+dinkyness amongst the women. Not a muffin roll in sight (is that that thing where women wear jeans and tops that are too tight for them in an apparent attempt to look more like Jeremy Clarkson and give themselves a circular beer-gut? I'm not sure if I remembered the term correctly).
I had a bit of a shock as we were coming in to land as I realised that my guidebook which was last updated in 2005 mentioned the fact that the airport I thought I would be landing in was soon to be used just for domestic flights and the new one that I was actually landing in would soon be taking all foreign flights. This meant all the imformation I had on how to get from the airport to the Koa San Road was obsolete. Nor were there hoards of backpackers with whom to hook up with and share taxi costs so I ended up getting an official airport taxi on my own which set me back a bit in Thai money but only about eighteen pounds in British money.
Have just been wondering round since getting here trying to buy a hat and some razor blades. Because I need a shave and didnt bring any, not because I am getting suicidally homesick as I havent watched the Guns of Navarone for at least three days.
Well, think I will head off now into the warm fug of a Thai afternoon and start planning where I want to contract my first bowel-disorder..I mean, where I want to eat tonight.
See ya'.

The eighties...god bless 'em

just watched rambo
fucking hell that was awful

A more fully formed entry

Well I seem to have the hang of this now. I have just bought my coach ticket to Heathrow for the 12th and beside a few odds-and-ends (such as packing and where to put all my stuff and getting all my official documentation photocopied in case of molestation and mugging and - actually I may still have a reasonable amount to do) I am now all set for my great South-East Asia experience. Only three and a half more days at work and nine and a half more days of in-this-country-ness to go before I blow this crazy popsical stand and head for adventure.

My very first blog post

Hello. Just posting this to check everything is working okay.