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.