Someone tell me what this billboard is advertising.

Or maybe what it's warning against.

Malaysia/Singapore 80's revival?

Just heard Karma Chameleon by Culture Club on the radio for the third time in eight days. What's that about?

300

Gayest film ever? Naaah...that's still Troy.

Oh well...only Hot Fuzz, The Kingdom, Spiderman 3, Shrek 3+4, Rambo and Die Hard 4 and Rocky 6 to look forward to now.

Whaaa?

Was anyone aware that noted Country and Western performer Kenny Rogers has a roast chicken restaurant in Kuala Lumpur? And if so why wasnt I informed?

Leeches

I went to Taman Negara National Park a few days ago which is a huge area of preserved 180,000,000 year old rain forest. I did a six hour trek into this bastard and stayed overnight in a hide. Here you see me in an state of shagged-outedness that I don't think I have ever attained before and hope never to attain again. Once I got back to semi-civilization I found this chap (along with a couple of others) keeping me company and felt compelled to take a photo of him sucking his heart out in parasitical contentment before squirming away loaded with my blood after I burned him off with a lighter.

When I was in the hide rats got into my food bag during the night and nibbled my crackers. They did not however get their sharp little teeth on the Whole Nut bar I had tucked away at the bottom of my rucksack. Ha ha! Man triumphs over animal! In your face Mother Nature!

Hindu Ben?

So I walk into Sri Mariamman Temple in Penang (near the Thai border on the Malaysian Peninsular) and this guy grabs me and takes me round the temple lighting candles and burning stuff, dabs some of the resulting ash/paste on my forehead and then extorts money off me. Am I to be Hindu now? I hope not. After all, the Christian/Muslim/Jewish concept of some kind of universal mind willing the existence of every single sub-atomic particle in the universe is difficult enough to swallow and anyone who does is a deluded fruit-cake in my opinion but it's positively rational compared to some of the guff that Hindus have to believe in. Still the temple was nice and colourful with surreal statues all over the place. The way in which they have been painted reminds me of Games Workshop role playing figures which wont mean anything to most people I'm sure.
This temple was in a Little India area. Most of Malaysia is Muslim and as such it is quite hard/very expensive to get a drink. Oh those silly Muslim types...when will they realise that alcohol is the cause of, and solution to, all life's problems? Still, pleased to see that schools in England won the right to ban veils.
I have to say that I haven't been too impressed with what I have seen of Malaysia so far. It is even more expensive than Southern Thailand and there is no corresponding rise in quality of accommodation/food/services (except coach services) to justify it. You are constantly hearing about Malaysia's pride in it's status as an emerging developed nation and it's drive to speed the process along and all I can say is that they will not achieve that goal until they have a radical overhaul of their toilet and plumbing facilities.
Singapore is next. That is going to be even more expensive again but I will only be there for three days and at least I'm ready for that.

Thailand - The Final Rip-Off

I cant be bothered to go into details. I will simply say motherfucking-bastard-motorbike-taxi-driver-twat-chops and leave it at that. Yes I have finally got out of Southern Thailand and not before time. What an overpriced dump. I'm sure there are lovely places if you know where to look but I didnt know where to look so basically Southern Thailand can stuff it's head up it's own arse for nothing and fuck off while it's doing it!!!

Having said that I did think the sign on this Tourist Information place near the bus station outside Krabi was quite sweet. Just like The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Why someone would be seeking tourist information from a place by the bus station outside Krabi is anyone's guess but there it is.

Malaysia here I come.

Yes I am now in Satun (which I keep pronouncing Satan) at the very Southern bit of Thailand...where the Muslims live. Will be crossing into Malaysia by ferry thus hopefully avoiding the Islamic fundamentalists busily shooting people in the head in the noble pursuit of religious unity. Satun is a one horse town and I am out of books and there is nowhere for me to get any new ones until I am in Malaysia and I don't have a T.V. in my room so I have an exciting evening of staring at the wall ahead of me.

Talking of books I was a little surprised when I was looking at the books I have read whilst on this trip to learn that I have only got through twenty five so far which is roughly five a month. Given the amount of time on my hands I thought that was a bit low.
I saw on Yahoo that Vernon God Little topped the poll of books that Britons had started but not finished. I too started it and did not finish but that was lying in Andrew's back-garden in Oxford waiting for everyone else to wake up and it was Gabriel's copy so I only got through a bit before I had to hand it over. Of the other ten books on the list I have started and finished five (though obviously I would rather not have started/finished The Alchemist) and not touched four.
By the way, just finished Last Orders by Graham Swift which is the best book I have read so far this trip and one of the best books I have read in a long time. Made me very nostalgic for English pubs and ale and wet weekends at Margate even though I've never been to Margate.

Do any species of animal have anything other than none or two or eight eyes? There are animals (sea-slugs, jellyfish etc.) that have no eyes and all mammals, birds, reptiles etc. have two and some spiders have eight but are there animals that have more than eight or less than eight but more than two?

Had a dream a few nights ago where I was charging across Stalingrad to try and liberate the city from the Nazis whilst simultaneously charging across Red Square during the Russian Revolution on my way to chuck the Muslims out of Jerusalem during the Crusades. Obviously my history was getting a little mixed up but I do know for sure that for some reason Johnny Depp was in charge of the whole shebang. What do you think that means?

Saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory recently. It was nonsensical and disjointed even by Tim Burton's admittedly high standards.

Well that's about it...see you in Malaysia.

I accidentally ate in McDonalds.

Basically I was in Patong in Phuket and had been drinking all day and hadn't eaten anything and was waiting for the bus to pick me up and take me to Simon's Transvestite Cabaret (that was quite good...if you haven't seen a fat tranny miming to Tina Turner's Simply the Best and a load of lady boys mincing about in Egyptian costume beneath a giant fake Sphinx to the strains of Boney M then you probably haven't lived. The fat tranny aside there where a lot of very convincing men/women on display. Penis-schmenis..we're all people!) and I needed to eat something so nipped into a nearby branch of MD and ordered a burger but the woman thought I meant a meal so I ended up having to eat it.
The traditional greeting in Thailand is the wai - a prayer-like gesture with the palms placed together accompanied by a small bow. As you can see from the sculpture outside (sculpture is too grand a term but I'm not sure what else to call it) McDonalds has incorporated this into their sales pitch. I'd like to see one in a heavily Catholic country like Spain or Ireland with it's arms spread wide and it's head on one side, possibly with I Am The Way written above it or possibly Take Eat, This Is My Body And My Blood Which I Give In Remembrance Of Thee though I realise that would be a bit fiddly to render in neon.

So I went from Phuket to the island of Phi Phi (pronounced Pee Pee though it could just as easily have been Shit Shit) which is a nice island unfortunately covered by a building site and crammed full of really loathsome Westerners who deserved to get swepted away by a tsunami. There was some important football match on yesterday, Celtic Rangers versus Jesus or something and every bar and restaurant had it blaring out of their t.v.s whilst sunburnt idiots cheered as if the outcome was actually important to their pitiful lives. Christ football is shit and everyone who cares about it is a twat.
Still, once that had ended the bar I was in had a boxing ring in the middle and I got drunk whilst watching pissed up tourists kick the crap out of each other which was quite funny.

I also (finally) did a snorkel which was good. Saw a sea-snake! Am now horrendously sunburnt and am trying to decide whether to go Kayaking tomorrow or whether to hide in my room covered in wet towels.

This is me doing a bungee jump.

Why? I hear you ask.

Because it is in man's indominable nature to scare himself silly every now and again for no good reason!

The name's Naylor...Ben Naylor.

Here I am near Phang Nga bay on Ko Phin Kan, or to give it it's proper title (as it is known in most of the tourist literature and brochures) James Bond Island. Yes here I walk the very beach where Messrs. Moore and Lee began their duel to the death in The Man With The Golden Gun. I'm sure you recognise the rock formation behind me (Ko Tapu - Nail Island) as the site from the top of which Scaramanga's big solar-powered death-ray thing emerges. Of course there were rather less stalls selling sea-shells, postcards and fridge magnets here when 007 did his thing. Given that they are still advertising the connection to a Bond film that is now 33 years old I was surprised by the total lack of any Bond related merchandise for sale. I would have thought at least that some enterprising chap would have a replica Walther PPK and Golden Gun to hire out to tourists for a photo opp. standing back to back, pistols at dawn style. Maybe it's just as well..imagine the agony of choice...do I want to be Roger Moore or Christopher Lee? Aaaargh!

Changing the subject...I had stated before going on this trip that if I got fed up and wanted to come home before I had spent all my money I wasn't going to force myself to stay out until it was all gone just for the sake of it...I was just going to pack up and bugger off. However Neil told me that when/if that moment comes I should push through it and stay out as long as possible as this is, if not a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a once-in-a-great-long-time opportunity and that does make sense to me. I had made tentative plans to go into Malaysia next and then Singapore, flying back from there to Bangkok. Then I thought oooh why not Malaysia, Indonesia then Singapore? Of course this was all speculated upon before I entered the slump of the past week or so. Mind you I don't know if this is an actual slump or if I'm just pissed off because stuff has gone consistently wrong since returning to Thailand.

I'm now in Phuket the dive capital of Thailand. Someone explain this to me - one day's snorkeling in Vietnam = $6 Cambodia = $9 Ko Chang in Thailand near the Cambodian border = $15 Phuket down south = $45.

$45 for a fucking snorkel!!!??? I'm not trying to buy cocaine! Plus all the trips seem to go to Phi Phi where I will be going next so I don't know if I should wait until I get there but I bet if I do all the snorkel trips from there will run to Phuket!

So far I have travelled through Southern Thailand not doing lots of interesting things so I don't really want to leave Phuket without doing something. I was going to see some Muay Thai (kickboxing) but that's too expensive and I was supposed to do a bungee jump today but something broke down somewhere so there was no electricity at the bungee place so I just ended up coming back to town. It was about 15 minutes out of town but at least the place I booked it from reimbursed me my travel costs. I'm going to try again tomorrow but I'm not optimistic. I suspect that Godzilla will attack downtown Phiket or something.

Anyway, all this stuff-going-wrong-and-how-much-did-you-say-that-costs-ness combined with what may be travel fatigue is only fuelling the little voices who are whispering "Go on..give up now..Go home..Think of all the money you'll have left..Imagine how much wine, take-aways and DVD's staring Richard Burton you could buy!"

The fact that I would like my Vietnam suits to get home first coupled with the fact that I don't actually have a specific home to go to are two of the main stumbling blocks to this plan of action.

By the way, after doing some research I'm not going to do a PADI course as you need to be a reasonable swimmer/confident in the water etc. and I'm not. Plus I would probably get savaged by a turtle or something. Also I found out that you can do tandem parachute jumps in Pattaya and I cant afford to do both. Hopefully my luck will have improved before I hurl myself out at 10,000 feet otherwise there could be a real downer ending to this trip.

Well it's all going tit's up and no mistake.

Quick recap. Left Koa Chang after my non-snorkel and headed south. Figured there would be plenty of cheap snorkel daytrips there (ha ha..aha ha ha..that's the sound of me laughing derisively at myself) that I could go on and practise my breathing, get confident etc. before splashing out on a PADI course (a beginner's scuba diving course) which are quite pricey, about $400 (this keyboard doesnt have a pound sign... halve $400 and you have it in pounds). So I rock up at Khoa Lak and discover that the visibility off shore is no good and you have to go further afield. Near here are the Similan Island which are supposed to have some of the best coral reefs and dive sites in the world. Unfortunately as they are some way off shore and because they have such a good reputation and as this is such a busy tourist destination and as Thailand is SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE a day's snorkel there costs $80 which is more than I can afford. One woman I spoke to was unsure if there were any offshore snorkel opportunities in this part of Thailand which would make a few practise trips prohibitively expensive if I want to still be able to afford to do a PADI.
I'd decided, what the hell, hang the cost, best dive site in the world and all that, i'll do it as long as one of the dive centres had a prescription mask so I could see what the hell was going on (I know when you snorkel nothing is too far away from you but I didnt want to take the chance and spend $80 and not be able to see anything. The trip I missed in Koa Chang was $15 which wouldnt have been too expensive had it been a visual failure. By the way, the snorkel trip I did in Cambodia was $9 and the cost of a snorkel trip in Vietnam was $6 plus free bar) but no-one did (scratch that, no-one had one for hire but a couple did have them for sale.. a snip at $80 and upwards). Nha Trang is Vietnam's premier dive site and the two PADI courses I asked about there both had prescription masks so I figured that Thailand would be sure to have them too. I would pay $15 for a snorkel trip with no prescription mask but there is no way I would pay $80 and no way I would pay $400 for a PADI cousre (which ends with a open ocean dive so good visibility is essential) without them. The Similan Islands is one of the best sites in Thailand making Khoa Lak one of the main dive centres so the fact that they dont have any doesnt bode well for anywhere else in the country.

Khoa Lak itself is okay I guess but it is really built around diving so there isnt a great deal else to do here. The beach is nice but, as I realised in Koa Chang, the trouble with beaches (and I think you tend to forget this if you havent been to one in a while) is that they are in fact fantastically boring if there is nothing else to do on or near them. At least at the beach in Sihanoukville in Cambodia you were constantly being hassled by children pedalling bracelets, women selling fruit and crayfish and offering massages and pedicures, and hideously disfigured guys who'd lost both arms in mining accidents or had their legs blown off by landmines asking for money so it kept things interesting. Also there were bars along the sea front that you could afford to drink from. Not the case here, there are bars along the sea front but as I believe I mentioned earlier Thailand is SO FUCKING EXPENSIVE!!! Was it this expensive in the North? I cant remember. I dont think so. Stick a beach or sea view onto something and you can stick a few more zeros onto the price. That's the reason no-one from Cornwall can afford to buy a house there.

Also, with regards Khoa Lak, I havent seen this many old fat ugly Germans in one place since....well I'm delighted to say that I have never seen this many old fat ugly Germans in one place before. There were almost certainly more in Pattaya but they tended to blend in with the other fat ugly tourists whereas here they stand out. And the odd thing is that when there are large groups or families the young ones are all toned and muscular and fit and Aryan looking and the old ones are bloated saggy sacks of crap. There seems to be no transition period. Do they reach a certain age and just swell up like Spanish women after they get married?
Enquiring minds want to know.

So I saw a woman firing bananas out of her vagina...

...no photos though.

That's what's called a 'teaser'. More in a minute.

So here I am again in Thailand. Crossed the border from Cambodia a few days ago, stayed overnight in Trat and then headed for Ko Chang. Nice island but I was only planning on going there for a couple of days to do a snorkel dive before heading toward Bangkok and then down south and the stupid cow at the guesthouse took my money for the snorkel day trip they organise but forgot to tell the people who actually turn up in the morning with the boat so I just sat around for a bit waiting pointlessly before fucking off back to the mainland in disgust. Got my money back though.
Hey ho. I'm heading to Khoa Lak today which is near Phuket, Krabi etc. where I will spend the rest of my time in Thailand, snorkeling, kayaking and scuba-diving. Not bad for a guy who cant swim to save his life. Well actually, I could probably swim to save my life should saving my life be required but fortunately the situation has yet to arise.

Just had a disgusting meal. Sometimes the noodles here can be quite nice but sometimes they can be like eating long flattened streaks of snot. Also it's some kind of holy Buddha day and bars and restaurants are not supposed to sell booze so I had to keep the bottle hidden under the table and drink from a plastic cup in case the police drove by. The sacrifices I make in the name of religious tolerance.

After Ko Chang I stopped for one night in Pattaya. As you may or may not know Thailand is the sex tourist capital of Asia (in fact, according to the guidebook sex tourism makes up 50% of all tourism in Thailand) and Pattaya is the sex tourism capital. What can I say, the place was pure class. As well as the sex aspect it's also the most popular beach resort in the country as it's only two hours from Bangkok so many tourists fly into the capital and then head to Pattaya to soak up the sun. As a result the place is a neon soaked nightmare of fat balding or mulleted guys wandering round with tiny delicate Asian prostitutes and whole families of squinty peeling German and English holiday makers. Lots of bars with names like The Nag's Head and The Plow and Parrot etc.
Not that I can really criticize as I took in a sex show whilst I was there, thus becoming part of the problem. You've probably guessed that's what the title of the entry is in reference to. The bizarre genital stunts and groups of curious tourists (often groups of women or even families - no kids, but lots of couples with their parents) in attendance combined to produce a spectacularly un-erotic spectacle that could only be made worse by some brighter lighting and possibly lots of photographs on the walls of my mum and dad looking disapproving.

You know, it's funny being back in Thailand. I think the thing that strikes me the most after travelling in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia is just how FUCKING EXPENSIVE it is here!!! Sweet Jesus! 80 Baht for a beer! 300 Baht for a crappy concrete hut near a beach! 875 Baht for a bus ticket to Khoa Lak!
I seem to remember people saying stuff like "Yeah it was just a hut with a bed in but it was right on the beach and only cost 3 dollars."
I'm beginning to think I misheard and they were actually saying "It was just a hut with a bed in and cost 10 fucking dollars BUT it was right on the beach."

Anyway, I have to go now and watch Rocky Balboa. Bye.