TravelStream™ news feed for member thomaswguy on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/thomaswguy en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:55:13 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1255183943/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1255183943/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1255183943/tpod.html Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:55:13 -0400 Where is tom dot com

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Bristol, England, United Kingdom

So I left you and left my travel blog in March!  I was in Agra India and had about of month traveling left in me.So where am i now and why has it taken me 7 months to get back on this web site?First i will start with where i left off.  We were in Agra we were super hot but still enjoying the sights sounds and atmosphere of India.  We moved from Agra straight to Mumbai as funds became a serious issue and after a few days not feeling to well after some dodgy ice cream we jumped on a plane and returned to Bristol.The total trip was around 11 months... we did not quite make the whole year but would not have changed the route we took or the way we did things.  We could have made a year if we restricted ourselves during the trip but we didn't and enjoyed any activity that took our fancy as we toured the world.... we both agree it was the best way to do the trip and are totally happy with the way things went.We saw some amazing sights met some amazing people and have created some long lasting friendships :)  I still have a lot of places on my list to visit and now a few places that i would like to re visit.  In case you are interested my top three favorite countries in no particular order from the year are Japan, Thailand and Nepal.  Japan for the extreme culture shock, the technology, the dress sense, the history, the ninjas and the anime :)  Nepal for the food, the trekking and the gorgeous scenery.  And Thailand for the food and large amount of activities available to a traveler on a budget.We have our travel blogs to look back on, tons of photos on flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/discozo/sets) and 16+ hours of video that we will edit into a watchable movie with music and all :)I now have the want to meet new people as much as possible after meeting so many nice people from different walks of life with interesting (much more than mine) stories to tell and laughs to share.  I also have a drive for life knowing what i have accomplished and what can be accomplished if you put your mind to it.So that was our trip... i hope you enjoyed the read... if there is anyone out there reading this and i can now give you a quick run down of the new chapter we are starting.  Why did it take me 7 months to get back on here?  Well! we enjoyed Mumbai returned to Bristol, surprised Zoe's family (knocked on their front doors with them not expecting us home for a month and having not seen them for 11 months) and did a similar surprise with my family.  We also kept a keen eye on facebook and managed to surprise our friends at a night in Bristol by turning up unexpected... it was brilliant and i loved it.  I have never been surprised like that myself and look forward to something like that possibly happening to me in the future.All of the surprising out of the way we set up base at my parents house.  No bedrooms free we slept on the living room floor and got to work getting our selves sorted.Before i go on i still have not answered WHY it took me 7 months to finish this blog.  A simple answer ... i wanted to be sorted, happy and have something to report before i wrote this.  Well today i am feeling sorted happy and have something to report about.Moving on!  After traveling i was not too keen to get back into full time IT support, as much as i have enjoyed fixing computers for a living i wanted something a little more creative and fulfilling.  A job where i could work hard and have something tangible to show for it at the end of the week... something where i could say.. look i made that, i was part of that yey.  So i looked at my options, looked into possibly developing some skills in the background while continuing IT support and then moving into a more enjoyable role.  I ended up getting interested in Flash design and action-script, made some inquiries with local companies and realized i would have to put in a lot of effort and work to make it happen, i was prepared to do this and that was the path i was going to take.What actually happened.... over a 2 month period of being back in Bristol i got in contact with over 100 companies to see what my options for the future could be and mainly to ask for advice as to how i could get into a creative roll and which path i should take to reach my goals.  One of the companies that got back to me (and luckily one of the companies i was most interested in made me a fantastic offer) this is after a few interviews here and there.The offer:  IT Support, and IT maintenance for the company while in the background they train me, and give me the resources needed to become an iPhone application developer.  I accepted and i am now three months in.  I still have some IT support responsibilities but my main role now is to develop applications for the iPhone and i love it.  It is creative, interesting and at the end of the working week i have something to be proud of :)  At the moment i have one application on the Apple itunes store and there are 35 people (last time i checked) using an application that i have created on their iPhones.  The applications are programmed in Objective-C and although i am liking the language there is a lot to learn and i have only scratched the surface.  I want to get good and get good quick, so that i can fulfill my role and continue to produce quality applications that i can be proud of.  I realize that i am going to be putting in a lot of effort over the next year... i am both excited and anxious about how this will go but so far so good and i am putting in the effort needed while enjoying my role at the same time. Perfect :)Get a job - Check.   :)Zoe has done super well and her aim was to set up her own business... whoop de whoop she has done it and things are ticking along nicely.  She has her own web design business (www.skillsontoast.co.uk) and she is enjoying it.  I am very proud of her.Zoe get a job - Check    :)The final stage to feel settled was to get a flat.  That is where i am typing this from now... we have moved in with one of our very good friends.  A spacious top floor flat with gorgeous views in the very center of Bristol.  My walk to work is a staggering 5 1/2 minutes.... Brilliant. We moved in last weekend.  This is the first weekend after the move, and hence the feeling of getting myself sorted after a year of constant moving about and the reason i now feel ready to finish this blog.Get a flat - Check.I spent the morning wandering around town, picked up a new book to read, had a tasty Latte and i am spending the rest of the day relaxing. Feeling happy.I hope everyone is well.  Thanks to everyone who may have taken the time to read my garble over the last year.  And if there is anyone out there - New friends, old friends... who feels compelled (not sure why you would) to give me a shout and meet up for a drink or what not give me a shout.  Thomaswguy@gmail.com   ThanksTom  
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1240662960/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1240662960/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1240662960/tpod.html Tue, 28 Apr 2009 06:35:36 -0400 Where is tom dot com

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Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India

Enjoying my first train ride in India! From Gorkhapur to Varanasi (if you haven't noticed this is a direct copy from my notebook like before).  I like writing onto paper, it's a good way to clear my mind.  Might even continue when I get home? Hmmmm ...someone mentioned Twitter?  What is it?  I have lost connection with current events while traveling, its been nice, someone said something about throwing a shoe at Bush as well, missed that.  Its Nice. I'm going to write about the journey from Pokhara, Nepal to this train.  Being the lazy travelers we seem to have become (Lazy as in not booking ahead etc.) we booked our bus the day before from Pokhara to the border, it was an early start and after some waiting around we were sitting on a rickety bus by 7:00am.  A pretty uneventful journey, apart from whizzing past a lorry a little to close, so close in fact that it ripped part of the drivers door off and made a beautiful metal on metal screech, as the two vehicles slid past each other.  Not to long after some driver - driver discussion before we were back in motion.   So we get to the border and realize from other travelers that booking a train to Varanasi would have been a good idea. We did the crossing, adding a few more souvenirs to the passport and decided on a local bus, cheap as chips.  Less than a quid for a three hour drive to Gorkhapur.  Less than 30 minutes in we were sat next to a petrified looking goat, who was so scared it relived its self in the aisle and onto my bag !  We found ourselves racing another bus, the other bus on the wrong side of the road, as our driver did not get in the other bus had to screech to a halt narrowly missing a head on collision with a truck...interesting...even more interesting when the same bus managed to overtake us and then performed a cop car maneuver pulling front of us and forcing us to an abrupt halt.  Our driver jumped out and a driver - driver ensued to cheering from our bus.  Finally made it to Gorkhapur, couldn't figure out the trains and settled for a hotel and a street Thali....our first Indian curry -> Bloody fantastic! So that puts us here! On the train, next stop Varanasi... well not the "next" stop but you know what I mean...that's where were heading.  Just to add we opted for sleeper class - no air - con, bloody hot! But comfortable and no tourists !  What are the gun laws in India?  Because three guys just got on the train in plain clothes with automatic rifles, old looking things but still powerful and scary looking guns...plus I just saw a bloke on the platform with a bolt action rifle! The next day: Survived the train trip, only injuries were a body full of bites from some insects I did not see.  You may notice I am still writing on paper and copying straight to my blog instead of writing from memory... I like it, it keeps it fresh. ***I did say that a few paragraphs ago so obviously not too fresh!!**  I'm sat on a table drinking masala tea in our guesthouse, Zoë is next to me teaching the Indian dude who runs the hostel how to play 500, a slightly complicated card game, I will leave her to it.  The rest of the train journey? Pretty uneventful, just had a chat to a guy with 8 kids! Very nice family.  We found a rickshaw and whizzed through the night to a guesthouse.... I think I mentioned we have become lazy.  We still are.  No guide book. No guesthouse knowledge / recommendation so we relied on the rickshaw driver.  We got to the guesthouse to find 2 of the biggest spiders I have seen this trip in our room.  I'm ignoring them and hopefully they will ignore me too! Today we wandered... one of my favorite travel activities, wandering...just taking in the sights sounds and smells of the city.  We wandered along the Ganges, people bathing, cows bathing...not seen any burning bodies yet though!  Had a curry for breakfast, we are playing curry lottery...order something you have never heard of and see whose tastes better.  Its currently 1 all.  Tried to find a cooking course BUT there are none! Even says so on the net!  Fingers crossed for Mumbai!  How did today start for me?  With a good luck gift from above..bird Sh*T. Back again... we met a Russian girl called Albina and arranged to share a boat down the Ganges, she brought an Israeli couple with her.  A good gang, we got a bloke to row us down the river... a really nice guy with a friendly face.  From the river we watched religious ceremony, people washing, then we made it to the funeral area to see bodies burning.  We did not get close or take pictures of this area out of respect.  We are just back from a restaurant where we continued curry lottery, a draw this time so we remain at 1 -1.  Walking back from the meal, the path was slightly blocked by a wooden cart I pushed past to realize that I was looking at a dead body getting ready for cremation on the river banks.   I am about to sleep but I just want to share a world with you.  It is a world where every meal is a different curry, each meal comes with a different type of bread, be it Nan, chapatti, or roti.  In this world you can eat curry three times a day, breakfast lunch and dinner.  If you are interested in this world a bottle of sprite costs less than 30 pence.  Roll on breakfast.  Sleep. Next day:  MAAHuussive spider next to shower, no deodorant for three days, dust, dirt, extreme heat and sweat....today I feel fruity, or maybe pungent.  Yes Pungent.  This morning I ate stuffed tomato curry for brekkie...stuffed with tasty cottage cheese!  We then jumped on couch surfer.com looking for possible couches across India we could crash on.  It is hot!  After another stroll down ye ol Ganges we are getting some fan action in our now pungent room before curry time ! Some time has passed: How much time?  I think it was yesterday when I last put pen to paper.  What have we been up to? lots and nothing at all, have been trying different restaurants, spent time reading, watched some south park and wandered some more.  Today we hired a cyclo (bloke on a bike pulling a passenger carriage) to ride us around for a while, as I filmed the cows, people and rickshaws whizzing past.  Zoë took pictures.  We tried a famous desert called "Hello to the queen" - Biscuit layer, banana layer, ice cream layer and lots of choco sauce - Tasty!  We have also moved guesthouse, the new one has cooler rooms, its in a perfect central location and the rooftop restaurant is where I am writing this from.  It is 8.30 and I have been here since sunset.  There is a gorgeous view of the Ganges and monkeys own the area , they were pretty active at sunset, babies and adults bloody everywhere, on roofs, the side of buildings, our roof, ventilation ducts, I watched them play as the sunset and had the sensation I was in a zoo.  The sensation came to me because the restaurant has caged windows and every now n then a monkey would stop by and peer at me through the bars.... I did get a little nervy as they are the same monkeys we saw being viscous in Vietnam.  We were protected by the waiter though as he has a rope that he scares them off with Indiana Jones style.  ***This blog is feeling a little scatty... maybe I am not so keen on the journal style of writing***  So I am waiting for pokaras (onion baji type things) and then off to "monkey temple"... There is a five day music festival there with Indian musicians playing through the night until sunrise.  EAT-> RICJKSHAW -> ENJOY MUSIC... that's the plan. I have learnt that tomorrow is election day!  Police have built some barricades on the street and with the recent bombings etc I am a little apprehensive.  I have been told that the streets will be full of voters and police, everything else will be shut.  I am going to take the opportunity to snap some pictures o the goings on but will defiantly have my wits about me.------Opinionated people - off topic I know but I write what I want.  I suppose opinionated is the wrong term, its good to have an opinion to feel strongly about, to have passion... I guess I am talking about "Know it all - I'm right your wrong " kind of people.  The only reason I bring it up is because I was just talking to a bloke with this attitude and I realized the only way to keep the peace is to agree, if like this guy they think they are so right it will be argued to the death.  So I agreed, although really I don't agree, I probably agreed for the easy way out, and that to oppose this guys opinion would have come across as rude and all the niceties of the time would be interrupted.  Babble I know but what I have decided is that these type of peoples attitude to discussion is leading them to miss out on other opinions, that is if others are "keeping the peace" like I was and essentially they are living in their own bubble of a world.  ***Ultimate babble -  but its nice to put your thoughts to paper - try it*** ------Election Day!  I have been in bed alllll day, pretty disappointing really I was looking forward to roaming the empty alleyways and checking out the police presence.  It is only 2:00 I guess I still could.... But probably not.  If I talk about last night I am sure this will become clearer.  So I ate, getting ready to leave for the festival, Zoë threw up and I started feeling poorly.  I really wanted to check out the festival so I made sure Zoë was OK and left for the festival with Albina (Russian girl)... I also didn't thin it was fair to let Albina go on her own.  We took a cyclo, the bumps making me feel much much worse.  Listened to some amazing sitar playing accompanied by bongos, but couldn't really enjoy it feeling so bloody rubbish.  The return journey was even worse and after bursting into our room me and Zoë took it in turns to projectile vomit all night long J  So Zoë is sleeping, I am feeling rubbish...fingers crossed for a speedy recovery (we think it was "Hello to the queen" that did it)Some time has passed: After being poorly we spent the next day resting and eating rice.  Our last full day in Varanasi.  The net day feeling a bit better  we watched the sun rise from the rooftop, the monkeys  woke and started getting active around us.  If reincarnation is possible I always wanted to be a bird of prey, I'm now leaning towards a monkey in Varanasi.  We were super looking forward to the 12 hour train ride to Agra because we had booked Aircon Sleeper class! A treat, proper luxury... let down though as at the station discovered we were only on a waiting list a "Pay the full price for two sleeping berths, see what happens when you get here, possible class change waiting list"  We were told we were lucky as one sleeper was available for us to share.  I did not feel too lucky trying to sleep on the most cramped bed ever with a Zoë next to me.... Obviously I am very luck to have the opportunity to be traveling on a cramped train in India so I am happy!We made it to Agra yey! That is where I am writing this now, what have we done today after arriving at 6:00am?  We hired a rickshaw and driver for the day... a 17 year old lad with 1 month driving experience behind him and he took us around the sights.  First the baby Taj....actually Backup!  The reason we decided to ht all the sights today -> It is world heritage day...yey!  Now we are super lucky... all sights are free for this one day of the year only.  Soo baby Taj.... Bloody gorgeous and empty, I will let the photos describe how beautiful it really is.  Then we viewed the back of the Taj Mahal from across the river in some stunning, untouched green gardens.  A perfect introduction to a truly spectacular masterpiece.  We sat in awe for some time then refreshed with a bottle of water...sneaky sneaky water.... They had cut the top off the lid halfway leaving the seal in tact, and then refilled the bottle... The benefit, I am not actually sure thinking about it..who drank the water in the first place hmmm, maybe not so sneaky, factory error?  Can anyone enlighten me?From the gardens it was Agra Fort (read about it here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agra_Fort).  Very very hot exploring the fort...we knew India would be hot, we knew we had picked the wrong time of year for India, but we had everywhere else so damn perfect we had to go somewhere off season, it is hot, drain your energy, fray your temper, make you want to stay naked in your room hot!  But we were mentally prepared and are pushing on.  After the fort we visited the Taj Mahal (Just in case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taj_Mahal) and after wandering around some I videoed 20 minutes of the sun disappearing behind the spectacular building.So we have explored Agra as much as we want to... happy to have seen some gorgeous sites.  Plans for the future... ummmm, we need to look into that.  Try and borrow someone's lonely planet or something and move on, but first we are taking a couple of rest days as we are both still feeling a bit crappy.  We think we have about another month possibly one and a half months left in us or should I say in our budget!  (A bit more than we first expected because it is so bloody cheap here J)  I'm personally looking forward to some smaller cities to explore JBooks read.... None since the last blog... I am reading one book called "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" and it is taking me a while... the most complicated book I have read on this trip so I am digesting it slowly... although I am re reading passages again and again, it is such a good book I will be re reading it afterwards....probably after a month or so when I have had time to digest it ! Photos as before are found here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/discozo/sets/72157616932909545/  Love to all  Tom P.S Had a beard trim in the barber the other day, it included a facial massage...very nice.  He did a good job at making my bad beard look as best as it can...bad. P.P.S India is HOOOOTP.P.P.S We have moved on from Agra now and i did write this a little while ago.... we are currently in Jaipur enjoying the sights and once again enjoying the curries...... i will write about everything upto Jaipur when i can face the ultimate heat of the internet cafe and the slooooooowwww Pc's  Maybe in a week or so :)P.P.P.P.S  Were now thinking around a month to go!  I bet it will whizzzz by :)  Planning on some Goa beach time before we leave ;) P.P.P.P.P.S  Some of the exclamation marks are capital J's so replace J with ! in your head because i dont have the energy ;P 
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1239267840/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1239267840/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1239267840/tpod.html Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:11:31 -0400 Where is tom dot com

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Pokhara, Nepal

Want to say: (*&(* *&%^% lkj  ... just needed to get that out of my system after writing my blog for three hours, the computer crashing and having to start a fresh.  So if it turns out a load of rubbish its because i have no want to write it anymore.A fact.. i thought i would start this blog with a fact.  A nerdy thing to do? Maybe, but everyone likes a good fact, or everyone likes to pass on a good fact (or at least i do), plus its always good to have a few interesting facts in your arsenal, just encase someone invites you to a bring a fact party, or your sharing facts with your friends, hmmm definitely nerdy.  Right the fact: 99.9999% of  all species that ever existed on planet earth is now extinct.  Wow!  How good of a fact is that! One of my favorite recently acquired facts.Enough blab why am i going on about facts anyways?!? maybe it is just an effort to make my blog a little more interesting... i have a feeling my last one was pretty boring, straight to the point boring...maybe thats what makes a good travel blog.... the facts, not thoughts?  I don't know if it was noticed by anyone that may read this, but my blog was featured on www.travelpod.com home page, good ay and while it was there i posted a really rushed, boring blog (excuse: Still feeling a bit poorly, or just recovering and pushed to get it out before our 20 day trek) Result: Over 2000 visitors to a boring blog in just under a month. We completed a trek, there were a number of options but we decided on the Annapurna Circuit, one of the longest treks available to give us a taste of the Himalaya.  I loved it, Zo loved it and I'm still aching from it now.  I will chuck you a couple of facts to start (notice a theme here) and then get cracking with my experience of the trip... joy oh joy :) ... don't worry I'm starting to get over the loss of my previous attempt :)  I'm gonna chuck in a map also.Planned days for the trek: 21Actual days taken: 18Highest point reached: Thorung La (pass) at the height of 5416m, or 17,769 feetTotal length of the trek: 259km / 160.9 milesMountains seen: Manaslu (an 8,000-plus meter peak), Langtang Himal, Annapurna II and IV, Annapurna III and Gangapurna, and, of course, Annapurna I and DhaulagiriPoint of interest: We passed through the worlds deepest valleyRisk of AMS (Acute mountain sickness): High (if unprepared or rushed) First i want you to know that I'm going to write this blog a little different to normal.  I'm writing the experiences and thoughts from the trip onto paper as i do the trip (this is the first entry right now) and then i will type it up word for word onto my blog **What I'm doing now**.... so a straight electronic version of the journal i wrote on the trip, or i am writing now... i think you get it.  **I just want to apologize if i move away from this form and back to writing from memory at some points, as I'm sure it might happen, maybe i will stick surrounding memories in asterisks like this** Day 1 - Besisihar (820m) - Bahundanda (1310m above sea level)OK I'm led in my sleeping bag, under a blanket about to read some more "Douglas Coupland - The Gum Thief", but i just want to tell you about day 1.  We woke at 5:30am and left our bags with the guest-house, we packed as little as possible (3 T-shirts, 2 trousers, 1 jumper...bla bla) i went as far as dumping my waterproof gear to make as much room as possible, as we have decided to trek without a porter or a guide, so we have everything for 20 days on our backs.  Soooo bags dumped, taxi, tea & cake at the bus station, a very rickety stuffed to the rafters (people in the aisle) 31/2 hour bus from Pokhara -> besisihar.  From here everyone took a jeep or a bus but me, Zo and a Ozzy guy called Dane decided to start the walking here.  We walked Besisihar -> Bahundanda in 7 1/2 hours, including a lunch stop, and a ginger tea stop.  The lunch stop was "Dal Bhat" a Nepalese dish similar to Indian Thali, you basically receive rice, curry, chutney, lentils (dal), a poppadom, and spicy potatoes.  Normally for around 80pence the good thing being that if you manage to finish it all you are entitled to seconds of everything, usually piling your plate higher than the first time.  The ginger tea stop included a spoonful of local honey (Hopefully keep the hay-fever at bay)... this was inspired by three tips offered by a guide: 1. Drink Ginger 2. Eat as much garlic as possible 3. If you get lost follow the donkey sh*t (this is particularly handy because you can use two of your senses for this, or even push it to three if you want to double check its donkey sh*t your following). So we walked along a gorgeous river, through fields, rice paddies, past water buffalo and goats.  A really nice walking day and no other tourists!  Strange, i really expected to see more like we did with Macchu Piccu, but after the bus no other tourists in sight....joy!  We found a guest-house and as we promised to eat in their restaurant we have a double room at 35 pence each for the night.  I just took on tip number 2 and ate garlic soup, plus chappatis, and drank lots of "Super yummy making this at home" massala tea - > Ginger, black pepper, sugar, milk and tea.  My legs hurt a little, it has been rain and thunder today, although we did not get too wet (The first rain in 5 months, hope i don't regret ditching the rain gear) AND we saw our first glimpse of a snow capped mountain yey!  Time to sleep. Day 2 awaits. Night Day 2 - Bahundanda (1310m) - Chamje (1430m)I'm wet! Soaked through, the last hour it pissed down, turning the paths into streams, i ditched my waterproofs and big towel in the name of space saving before we left so i am now wet.15 Min's later:  Dry again Whoop! Zoe just rubbed my feet to warm them up, i can feel them again, I'm about to find some food and massala tea, maybe read my book.  Wearing shorts, socks and sandals a loverly combo while my stuff dries.  Right, today we walked through rice terraces a few fields, up some very steep hills, stopped once for Dal Bhat, plus i got greedy and wolfed down a whole pack of biscuits.  That was about it, we are resting for the night in a guest-house with the comfy-est beds i have slept in for weeks.  It has a gorgeous view of the best waterfall so far and i will look forward to falling asleep to the sound of falling water.  My umbrella broke to day so i am just using the metal shaft as a walking stick and have ditched the rest. A few hours later: Tired at 8:00pm! Just lost at cards, ate some tasty munch and failed to impress some local kids with a card trick.Thought: I have never visited Ireland or Scotland, and they are both so close! weekend adventures to come maybe :)  Read.  Sleep. Dream.Day 3 - Chamje (1430m - Bagarchap (2160m)Its nearing the end of the day, just enjoying the last bit of sun before it hides behind the mountain, quite a bit of walking today and once again it rained.  We held off in a teahouse for a while as it passed but it did not take long to hit us again and i got soaked once more.  Not a problem though, as the sun came out and my clothing is on the line for tomorrow.  My umbrella that turned into a walking stick is now neither, it snapped.  We met some stunning views today and followed the river for most of the day.  The water is a gorgeous color, like blue powerade, a real nice turquoise.  It almost forced me to write a poem, but my testosterone kicked in plus it would have been a rubbish poem anyways.  We also followed a donkey train a fair while until we could squeeze past on the mountain trails.  I feel bad for them, all they do is lug stuff up and down the mountain to meed our needs: kerosene, food, drinks...and how are they rewarded? They get to stare up the ass of their mate all day long. Thought: How easy would life be for animal activists and animal welfare if we had  a Dr Doolittle kicking about.  I'm sure the donkeys would have a few complaints.We are waaaaay ahead of our planned schedule! I also got my trail name "Goat Boy", i like to think this is because of my incredible balance and amazing ability to tough it in the wild but i have my stupid beard to blame  (secretly i like the name, i hope to graduate to Goat man by the end of the trek)  Need to think up a name for Zoe hmmm.  Eat. Sleep. Day 4 - Bargarchap (2160m) - Chame (2670m)I'm all wrapped up again after an icy shower! We have found a loverly place to stay with individual shed like cottages.  I might take a second to explain all of the guest-houses we are finding on the route: This is called a "Tea house trek" for the simple reason that every small settlement you reach is kitted out with at least one tea house to sleep for the night and get some grub, and as we found out you an often get a free room for the night if you eat at there restaurant and there are a few of you. There are now six of us Me and Zoe, Dane (Ozzy guy), Nikko and Rebecca ( a German couple), and an American guy called Barnabas.  As we are a gang we managed to get a small cottage for free each as long as we eat there grub. Perfect.  Found a name for Zoe - Nipps... gets very cold on the mountain :)  ooohhh and yes we have now properly made it into the mountains.  We had 360 degree panoramic today.  As we get higher the air is getting thinner but for some reason it feels purer... i love it.We have properly slogged it out with long days of walking putting us 2 days ahead of schedule and we have finished walking for the day today at 3:30pm So lots of reading, tea drinking, card playing to be done me thinks.  And there is a hot spring, all the more perfect, can not wait to soak after some hardcore walking. An hour later: No hot spring :( the guest-house owner pointed the 6 of us in the right direction we trundled off in swimmers and sandals in the freezing mountains and after a 15 minute walk discovered a hot puddle big enough for one of my feet.... the hot spring had been taken out by a landslide!!  I'm sure it is an in-joke with the locals to watch the tourists head off kitted out for the springs with towel n all knowing that all remains is a warm puddle!2 hours later: Cold. Lots of tea drinking behind me and some great card playing. Sleep.Day 5 - Chame (2670m) - Upper Pisang (3300m)I'm now enjoying a stunning view of Annapurna II, it is as i say stunning.  We are now at 3300m and there is a possibility we will start to encounter symptoms of AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) So the rule is if you feel any symptoms stay where you are.... if it gets worse descend, if the symptoms disappear your OK to continue your ascent.  Nothing much more to say other than I'm looking forward to my Dal Bhat! Some time later: Lots of cards, and now about to sleep early to a windy night.Day 6  - Upper Pisang (3300m) - Manang (3540m) I'm sweating! But the view makes it all worth while, I'm staring at Annapurna II... it looks close enough to touch the peak reaching 7937m above sea level.  We are just waiting for breakkie..  Tea, garlic omelet and Tibetan bread.  It is now 8:45am and we have been walking for just over 2 hours waking at 5:45am... the walk has been mainly uphill and I'm starting to feel the altitude.  We started at 3300m in Upper Pisang and in two hours have walked to Ghyaru at 3670m. What a bloody long trek...seemed to drag on although the scenery changed dramatically into strange giant termite hill looking mountains.  After 8 1/2 hours on the trail we arrived at our destination MANANG.... Strangely we arrived at exactly 3:00... the time of the mountain safety lecture held by "The Himalayan Rescue Association of Nepal" and at the same time snow began to fall.  We got further educated on the risks / warning signs of AMS, while the snow fell outside.  After listening to the experts i have been rewarded with a couple of  "interesting to me maybe not so to you" facts:  Levels of oxygen in the air :)Currently where we are now in Manang: 60% OxygenOn the high pass we will be crossing in a few days: 50% OxygenMount everest: 33% OxygenWe have also been told that we will now find ourselves breathing at 4 times the normal rate as our bodies attempt to get the level of oxygen required.  Plus all the usual about not pushing on with symptoms as you can die, as many trekkers have done before.  Interestingly enough it is now more important than ever to educate people here on the dangers of AMS...the reason being that back in the day only experienced trekkers hit the route, but now that Nepal is becoming more accessible along with its treks people like Joe the plumber and me can wander up here, and with no background in trekking can die.... God bless "The Himalayan Rescue Association of Nepal" and their life saving facts. Some time later: We have just returned from a movie hall (projector screen) and watched "into thin air" a heart warming story of some guys that lost their lives on Mount Everest...very fitting!  I wonder was that the highest cinema in the world?  Off to play cards and watch the snowfall, now doubt sleep and dreams will follow so i wont be back to you until tomorrow. Day 7 - Manang Still (3540m)There is sooooooo much snow!  I'm looking at 1 1/2 feet outside and its still falling!  We planned to trek high and sleep low as recommended to combat AMS BUT as we can not see the trails, cliff edges, etc we are snowed in...it's too dangerous to walk.... can't even walk back on ourselves.  If the heavy snow that is still falling does not melt we could be here for days i now feel fully unprepared and unequipped as before i managed to ignore it.  Most people have waterproof coat and trousers, proper hiking sticks and gloves... i have, woolly gloves, woolly jacket, a bamboo cane as a walking stick (actually known as sticky) annnnnd the same cotton trousers i have worn for most of the year.  Ok here comes my veggie burger for brekkie Yum. Some hours later: Fun in the snow!  I got wet and therefore kitted myself out with a waterproof jacket, trousers and gloves for 9 quid and then i had a snowball fight with the locals :) Managed to get exactly the same jacket and trousers as Zoe in the same color we are now kitted out with his and hers waterproof gear... i have always been fearful of this day.We built a snowman and got involved with our group of 6 making a snow Yak, we let the local kids join in too.  I have a couple of pics of the kids, and Zo on the snow yak so i will chuck it up.  **Memory - The next day a REAL yak was getting on rather well with the snow yak...how bloody brilliant*** I feel super fat..but I'm loosing weight.  trekking at altitude or i guess trekking altogether is a great excuse to eat as much food as possible all in the name of building your energy, so if you like food get trekking.  I'm stuffed on cheese bread (Yak Cheese), apple crumble & custard and a large pot of milk tea all while playing cards with our current travel group.  We all have trail names now:  The German couple are known as Doc (Rebecca has a portable hospital with her, plus she is a nurse) and Glen (Nikko is a barman and an expert on spirits especially whiskey), the American guy Barnabas... who happens to be a pro ice hockey player currently playing for a living in France is known as Scrubber (because he keeps winning a Spanish card game called scrobber...we modified the name), and Dane our Australian companion is known as PK (President Kenny, he keeps winning presidents and his jacket makes him look like Kenny from south park), Zoe is still nipps and i have not yet graduated from goat boy to goat man.Some time later: I have just finished washing form a bucket of hot water...more snow, lots more snow!  How long until cabin fever sets in? The night has ended with a repeat trip to the cinema this time to see "yes man"... i enjoyed the movie, very entertaining, but it is not true to the book, which is pretty disappointing, if you get a chance though read the book it is bloody brilliant...especially if you say NO to a a lot of people, and find yourself missing out on hundreds of opportunities..."life is but a breath"...how poetic...come on testosterone!Mmmmm home made lasagna...sleep.Day 8 - Manang (3540m) - Yak Kharka (4018m)I just had sooooo much fun!  First the day, then the fun.It was blue skies in the morning and lots of sun.  We decided to hit the trail, even with the snow, although it was perfectly fine as we saw a guide and his group hit the trail first all we had to do was follow the footsteps. Before we set off i stocked up on baked goods and we hit the trail....bloody hard day trekking through the snow breaking the 4000m mark at 4018m reaching Yak Kharka (translates to Yak Pastures).  There are a lot of Yaks grazing here, i had some super strong super tasty yak cheese and I'm very tempted to buy a knife these guys are selling, the sheath made from Yak bone and Yak horn. Anyways the fun! We are staying at a slightly run down lodge but run by two cool guys.  One of them offered to take us for a walk in the mountains to spot some yaks... He took along his Bow and Arrow.  It was quite a hard trek up the hill spotting snow leopard tracks on the way in the snow...then we watched Babu hunt blue sheep (they look a lot like deer) He was pretty fast sprinting up the hill and managed to hit one of the deer, but the arrow bounced off unable to pierce the touch hide.  Good fun to watch. Now making more use of the Yaks... waiting for a Yak Curry while the room is warmed up by the burning Yak Sh*t on the fire... Toasty.  Food Time!Day 9 - Yak Kharka (4018m)- Letdar (4200m)Huff...Huff...Pufff...puff, just completed another acclimatisation session.... walked up a pretty steep hill for a few hundred meters and then back to our tea house attempting to stick to the "Trek high, sleep low rule" of acclimatisation.  The Yak curry last night was bloody tasty (bit like beef), thought a town named after our furry friends would be the best place to try it :)  This morning i smothered my shoes in Yak grease for extra waterproofing...do they ever stop being helpful?  Oh and i ruined a birthday present...my birthday being in 2 days.  Zoe planned on buying the knife i mentioned earlier and surprising me with it, buuuut true to form i ruined my surprise by buying the knife myself...very kindly though Zo paid for it :) The entries are becoming a little shorter now...maybe because i am having so much bloody fun with our traveling group (we are still together), or i could possibly blame it on the altitude making me lazy or ummm oh i know... we are currently only traveling short days of three hours or so, as you are not allowed to ascend more than 300m a day if you don't want to be another statistic of AMS..yea thats it, thats the reason.  Sleep. Dream.Day 10 - Letdar (4200m) - Thorung Phedi (4450m)I'm now sitting at Thorung Phedi after walking from Letdar.  Just warming up after an acclimatisation walk that rewarded me with some stunning views of glaciers and mountains, were currently living in the clouds.  The walk up the hill gave us a view of the glacier stuck between two rocks... giant and menacing with  a kinder side of blue peeking through.Other than that today has been quite a hard push annnnd we had to walk or rather jog at altitude with our backpacks through a high risk landslide area.  We decided to break and as we stood their some small rocks traveling at quite a speed broke off of the crumbling hill and whizzed past our heads.  We ditched the break and continued on.Some time later: We are now sitting in a warm double glazed dinning room, within a cloud, a snow cloud... trekking tomorrow?Day 11 - Thorung Phedi (4450m) - Jharkot (3550m)Our plan for the day - Make it to high camp sleep and complete the pass for my birthday... this is not how things went, i am now shattered and i might add bloody dedicated to be writing this after today!We said goodbye to the gang planning on breaking up our group as they all wanted to push on and i wanted to wait a day so that i could complete the high pass on my birthday.  Knowing that we would not meet again, i ruined my birthday surprise from them forcing them to give me a necklace they had all chipped in for, strung with a black stone ... i love it  :) We let the group go and ordered breakfast getting ready to settle in at high camp for the rest of the day, with nothing much to do and gorgeous blue skies outside i decided waiting around for just another day of the year was stupid and we should take our chance to make the pass...that is what we did :)We broke every rule by crossing on our own today, as you are supposed to cross in a minimum group of five and if we did not push ourselves we would be on the high pass after mid day when the weather would be changing for the worse and you would not want to get stuck there!  We slogged it out and a bloody hard slog it was and made the peak to the top...en -route i felt dizzy and a headache kicked in, so we were happy to have made it and keen to get me down the other side as descent is necessary to stop yourself from falling into the more dangerous symptoms of AMS.  All the way up the hill we were blasted with winds and snow whipped into our faces from the mountain, we were also chased by clouds that seemed to close the route behind us as we walked.  After we did the usual photo op at the top and i took a little video we headed on for the descent...a bloody long descent and not a good idea for those with weak knees without some supports.  We found ourselves trekking through clouds and snow until reaching Muktinath (3800m).  In a bid to re-join the group for my birthday the next day we checked the police log at the check-post and sherlock Holmes style discovered they had pushed onto the next town...we did too.  Sooooo after 11 hours of walking i have ordered myself a lasagna with cheese bread, and am very much looking forward to some sleep.  The group was ecstatic to see us as we were them and we called it a Reunion even though we had only departed 11 hours earlier.  If you want to get a good idea of how i was feeling on the crossing of the high pass, i made a recording on my MP3 players Dictaphone while crossing, a collection of clips along the way.... have a listen but bear in mind i was cold so i don't restrict my use of french annnnd i made it melodramatic on purpose..I'm not that much of a numpty.  Enjoy. Grub yum. Sleep here i come.  ***Unable to get recordeing from my MP3 player - so ya cant hear me swear on on the mountain :(***Day 12 - Jharkot (3550m) - Marpha (2670m).. My 25th BirthdayQuick entry - just getting ready to leave for the day and get back on the trail after yesterdays 11 hour slog. I had to tell you about my loverly morning, i awoke to a pot of tea, and an apple pie with a candle in it.  Our gang of 6 plus a couple of extras in the gang sang me happy birthday to start the day... "Happpyy birthhhday deaaaaarrrrrr goooooaaat boy, happy birthday to you" while i blew out the candle :)Some time later:  Blooooody hell it has been windy today, super windy.  We ignored the advice of a couple we were chatting to last night who advised us to get to point X by 11 o clock because that is when the wind roars through the valley... we shouldn't have!  My face feels damaged from the barrage of wind and sand that hit us all day!  We have crossed through the deepest valley in the world today (the windiest as-well maybe?) and made it to Marpha... a town whose main reputation comes from its cider.  A very fitting spot for my birthday coming from cider country myself we spent the night, playing pool, eating loverly grub and drinking some home made cider...chunks of apple n all (bloody good cider too!)  The town its-self is very quaint with brick buildings and small alleyways to get lost in... i also attempted to ring home today so they could wish me Happy birthday...failure, not much opportunity to call home in the mountains...but i knew the birthday wishes were being sent out anyway :)Some time late: Bugs, bloody nasty looking bugs.  Fat with a whole bunch of legs and pretty long...there were three crawling on the wall.... i just grabbed Barnabas being the wimp that i am and he removed them for me :) Sleep.  Day 13 - Marpha (2670m) - Larjung (2550m)I awoke this morning to stomp on all of my clothes and bag... those bloody bugs, i got up in the night to go to the toilet shinning the torch near the door there were three more of the buggers and they were crawling i also had a quick shine around the room from my bed before i drifted off into a very unsettled and sleepless night to spot another one crawling across the ceiling...damn bugs!Rant over.  Ofter waking bracelets, six of them..guess who for.  Yes the group, after making my birthday a really nice day i decided to give everyone a bracelet to say thanks and as a reminder of the trip for them.  We took a four hour walk to get to where we are now. Relax time :)This morning when we stopped for brekkie we happened across a funny sight... Yak Donald's. Bloody brilliant.Day 14 - Larjung (2550m) stillI am bloody knackered!  We spent an extra day in Larjung for a side trip to visit some ice falls.  It was a climb and a half.  After waking at 6:30 am we climbed 1000m and after realizing that we wouldn't see anything (we were walking through clouds) we turned back.  Another reason for the return was altitude, i was making goofy faces and not making much sense (although i still stick to the fact that i was fine) and glen was getting chest pains.  The day was not a waste though...oh no not a waste at all.... dum dum dummm.We rested on a plateau still Rather high from the ground with an excellent view of the valley and what flew by within 10 meters of us... a giant EAGLE, a giant bloody eagle! it was massive, you could see all features of its elegant form, you could almost grab it.  One of the highlights of my entire trip!  We watched it circle the valley and then soar past us again, effortless, beautiful. Poetry moment maybe...nah.Sleep.Day 15 - Larjung (2550m)  - Ghasa (2010m)I slept surprisingly well last night considering the rodents i could hear scratching behind the wall.  I also enjoyed a breeze of a walk hitting new scenery.  Alpine!  I love the forest, i love woodland, wal;king through this kind of scenery is my favorite and i enjoyed the day immensely.With only four hours walking i am writing this at 1:00pm and don't plan on returning to you until tomorrow, time to relax :)Day 16 - Ghasa (2010m) - Tatopani (1190m)Gorgeous forests and greenery... Now this could tempt me to become a poet, but it wont as i know it would be rubbish :PAfter yet another day surrounded by the sounds of birds, the smell of wood, and trees, trees and more trees we were rewarded with some real hot springs.I'm writing this now, yet again stuffed with food but i will tell you why in a minute.We enjoyed the hot springs a definite treat to rest our aching bodies after the trek and also to prepare us for the walking we can look forward to tomorrow.  I am so happy, i am really enjoying this trek and can recommend it to anyone... so happy I'm going to fall into a happy sleep and prepare for the early rise of 5:00am i have planned for tomorrow.  Just a side not...getting up early and getting in a couple of hours walking before breakfast is a bloody brilliant idea, you are traveling lighter, for the first hour you are still half asleep and by the time you wake you realize you have already covered two hours of ground.Why am i stuffed?  PK has become poorly, but not after ordering a steak..poor guy.  I had to help him out by eating my lasagna, garlic bread and then his steak and chip.  Oh i topped it off with a cadburys chocolate cake and custard yum. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzDay 17 - Tatopani (1190m) - Ghorepani (2750m)Today has been difficult, i am slightly revitalized from a steaming shower but still shattered.  Today was possibly harder than the high pass.  I finished the day on jelly legs, dripping in sweat plus an appetite to beat last nights!  We were walking by 6 am and with our packs on our backs, completed the day after 8 hours of pure up hill, most of it very steep!  making a total climb of 1560m upwards.  It was hardcore but although I'm moaning i enjoyed it.  I could hear my body, my breathing, the aches the pains, it was another way to let me know how i alive i am.There was a small issue at the start of the day, after a good 2 hours of steep climbs. Poor Zoe, she had pains in her shins, and was not having a good time.  Credit to her she did not turn back and get the next bus to Pokhara to wait for us she pushed on.... and luckily within the next hour we found a pony trekking service, that after some hard bargaining agreed to take her to Ghorepani! Zo was happy as she got ride a horse through the Himalaya.  I have to admit i was also happy as it allowed me to push on... I find the hardest thing for me to do is slow my pace when it comes to a hardcore walk...i need to push on as hard as i can for as long as i can or the day becomes very difficult for me.  Thats what i did and was happy to reach the end of the eight hour walk with Scrubber ahead of everyone else including the horse..Winners! its not a competition i know but ...Winners! :)Some time later:  I am going to burst (notice a theme here) Just had dal baat.... the refill got me, on the refill i was given a plate of rice normally;: used to feed a family of four.. i finished it!  Sleep.Day 18 - Ghorepani (2750m) - Naudanda - The final Day!I am now back in Pokhara and about to head out for a celebration meal with Dane and Scrubber.  We met on day 3 or 4 and stuck with each other for the rest of the trek.  The Glen and Doc the German couple left a couple of days ago... they are heading on to complete another 7 day trek to Annapurna base camp.  Might i also point out that on day 6 Doc had her foot trodden on by a donkey, it has been swollen since then, she thinks that one of the small bones may be broken and yet she still treks on!  She even did the high pass with one broken foot, the other foot having a shoe with which the sole was hanging off! Nutter! or super woman...i cant decide.Anyways the day... bloody difficult yet a gain a good 6 - 7 hours of walking including over 2000 meters descent, helped out by over 3000 steps downward.  Today i really had jelly legs...and poor ol Zo was experiencing the most pain she has felt so far on the trip.  We were glad to complete the trek with a couple of hard days making the achievement of completing the trail that much better :)Thats it...I'm done talking about treks now.  I loved it and recommend it to anyone, very rewarding...plus don't forget the fact about it being an excuse to eat lots and lots and lots of tasty food :)----Sooo thats the end of my notebook from the trek..see the end up there marked of by a dotted line. Thats it.What have we been up to since then...well we have been hanging out with PK aka Dane and Scrubber aka Barnabas for two days, we bought DVD's and chilled out with junk food in between going out and eating at restaurants all in the name of putting on the lost weight from the trek :)PK and scrubber left for Kathmandu today, scrubber is returning to France and possibly continuing his career in Professional Ice Hockey.... PK he is off to complete a trek to Everest base camp.  Set up by a guy he met while working in England.. 50 of them will be playing a couple of games of cricket at base camp, sponsored by Nokia and for a Guinness world record.  This will be shown on ITN so keep your peepers open in the next few days for it.Plans for the future: India!  We should be leaving tomorrow, heading to the border and then heading into India.  Looking forward to it, although i am sure that i will miss Nepal it is an amazing country.Books read:The Gargoyle - Andrew Davidson: What a bloody brilliant book, could not put it down...not because i was in suspense but just because of pure enjoyment.  One of my favorite books read this year... i think it would make a good movie plus it has definitely given me a new measure of respect for burn victimsThe Gum Thief - Douglas Coupland: Picked this one up because i enjoyed Coupland while i was traveling the U.S, and he didn't disappoint this time either, a very enjoyable , easy readInto The Wild - Jon Krakauer: Seen the movie loved it and the soundtrack, read the book loved it as-well, it goes into stories of people who have completed similar trips as "Alex Super-tramp" the guy in the book.  So it is good to get a few comparisons and possible reasonings for his journey.So India  :)Once again grab all of our pics from this trip here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/discozo/sets  My trekking pics are under "Nepal 2 (tom)"Enjoy!Tom
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Kathmandu, Nepal

Ooooo K Cha cha cha. The last time i left you i had a bad foot resting on Koh Phangan with a number of options before our flight to Kathmandu.  Well we are now in Kathmandu, low on money but still loving our trip with some slightly altered plans for the future :)  Before i let you in on the start of our Nepalese adventure i will fill you in with everything between lying in bed with a bad foot and touchdown in Nepal :) Well my foot healed up fine, i started to feel fine so we booked up a three day Live aboard dive trip on the west coast of Thailand.  To get there we spent a surprisingly comfortable night on a ferry, with foam mats to sleep on getting to Surat Thani.  Waiting for a bus from here to Khao Lak we bumped into Leron, a guy that we had spent some time with on the organic farm in the north... we spent some time catching up and he informed us that after we left the farm he built an oven out of mud...they all enjoyed making pizzas and cakes! Sounded awesome and after looking at pictures of what else had got up to after we had left we started to miss the place again...ahh well we can put it on our list of places to return to :) Waiting for our dive trip to start we spent a couple of days in Khao Lak (where we were to catch the dive boat).  Khao Lak, hmmmm..... expensive.  This area was hit hard by the Tsunami and you could see a few after effects here and there, they also had Tsunami warning signs pointing out evacuation routes etc.  Our two days were spent on the beach getting the last bit of beach time in for this trip :(  I was able to relive my childhood after blagging the use of a  body-board off of one of the locals...we had a load of fun splashing about and catching waves... even though half of the day it was pissing down with thunder and lightning we remained English and remained on the beach :)  Zoe got all bay-watch and practiced her new rescue skills on me :)  So the dive trip!  We decided to make it a little more interesting and book on a "Whale shark research and education" trip as opposed to just going on a standard diving trip.  What did this mean?!!  it meant that in between dives we were listening to lectures and learning all about whale sharks, sharks and rays...which i loved and was a major highlight of the trip.  We also received a "whale shark specialty SSI dive qualification" which involved completing a few special dives on the trip.  Before i get into the dives we completed, i just want to let you know that we booked with http://www.wickeddiving.com and i can highly recommend them :) Right the dives..actually no not the dives, i will save the dives until last.  We boarded the boat (our home for the next 3 days) and met our fellow travelers and the Wicked diving staff... a great bunch of people and a good laugh throughout the three days.  We were then shown to our cabin and happy to find a small welcome gift on the beds (Lovely touch) we received a handmade bar of lemon-grass soap each as well as some fresh flowers, a wicked diving T-shirt and a wicked diving head strap for our diving Goggles (i currently just have the head strap so I'm gonna have to buy some goggles to compliment this).  The room was perfect with a gorgeous view of the ocean as we whizzed along the water to our first location.  The food on board was super spanky and super tasty, loved it :) and overall it was an amazing trip, an experience i will never forget :) Now the dives.... We dived around the Surin Islands, Richelieu Rock, Koh Tachai, Koh Bon and the Bonsoong Wreck.  There were four dives to be completed to receive the SSI ECOlogical diving certification.  The first, a "Perfect Buoyancy" dive was to improve buoyancy while diving, this helps to preserve the reefs and coral systems by preventing divers from kicking or landing on these living environments and also extends your dive-time by improving your streamlined positioning in the water and conserving air....we basically had to display a couple of skills and play a couple of games demonstrating our buoyancy.  After the required skills we continued on a fun dive and spotted two Leopard sharks.... absolutely stunning animals, i will put a picture up, their tail fins have a distinct shape and along with their pattern they are beautiful.  The two we saw were mother and daughter :) ohh and we also saw a bloody gert sting ray lying in the sand...maybe 1m wide. The second specialty dive was a reef clean-up dive...picking up foreign debris from the dive sites and being told how to remove items safely and learn how to determine if they've been there long enough to become part of the habitat.  We found a bunch of fishing wire that we removed with some snips, a big blue pole and the top of a kettle!! How i felt good at removing some debris..oh on this dive we also spent about 10 minutes watching an octopus change colour and roam around a rock. The last two specialty dives focused on photography and shark education... we did not have much luck with the camera... one of the things we were looking forward to on this trip was the use of a underwater digital camera as sold in the package, we were excited to have pictures of ourselves at one of the best diving spots in the world..well the fist dive with the camera went OK, we had a practice and were just kind of getting used to the settings (or Zoe was as she had first dibbs), the second dive was not so successful! it was my turn and upon returning to the surface i noticed the expensive plastic underwater casing that held the expensive camera was full of expensive item killing sea water... our dive guide was definitely not happy so we decided never to mention the camera again for the rest of the trip...therefore no underwater pics of ourselves or what we saw!  Luckily we had a professional photographer with us who has promised to upload some pics so we are looking forward to them and we also bought a video from a guy with an underwater camcorder on our trip...so we have some descent underwater footage ..whoop! Soooo the rest of the dives were all amazing, on one i saw a black and white banded sea snake which scared the life out of me! it swam behind Zoes head (she missed it) and past me towards the surface...pretty damn close.  They are super poisonous but apparently can not bite you (unless they manage to get hold of your earlobe or the skin between your fingers) none-the less this scared me a million times more than a shark ever could and i managed to suck out half the air in my tank in fear :) We encountered three leopard sharks, one was a mum and her baby, the last encounter was a descent sized beauty chilling out on the ocean floor, i managed to get close enough to see her gills in action and had a very special moment...definitely my current favorite shark...this may change in the future with more diving experiences but currently the Leopard shark comes in at Number one on my fav shark list.  There were tons of fish on all of the dives, a lot more than at Koh Tao but unfortunately we did not See the big one again.. a "Whale Shark" we did however have an amazing time and it was definitely amazing diving... ooo we also discovered again how lucky we were to See a whale shark the first time, especially chatting to people with 100+ dives and people who had been diving for 15 years without ever seeing one! Oooo i forgot to mention my favorite dive :)  It was so special i am never going to forget it.  We were in search of a big black aeroplane.  We spent the start of the dive following the coral, checking out the fish and generally having a good dive, the dive became a million times better when we spotted what we were looking for a Manta Ray! OH My God it was amazing ... a 3.5 meter manta ray appeared in the distance, emerging from the deep blue it headed straight towards us and coming super close performed some underwater acrobatics, disappearing again from where it came...... it left me wanting more, and it did not disappoint making three passes in total and displaying some cool underwater skills.  Three point five meters! it dwarfed us, got my heart racing and made the trip for me... thank you manta ray.  The video of our encounter has been put up on the net, with thanks to Dan the video guy on our boat... he also has the octopus we saw and some coral ...you can check it out here: http://blog.wickeddiving.com/  ...please do (check the following entries: 11th March - Octopus, 10th March - Manta ray) Right so that was the diving trip, Super duper amazing.. if you have a chance look up this video: http://www.sharkwater.com/ thats the web site, not sure where you can buy it but if you can find it do so...very educational and is a great look at what is happening to the sharks in our waters, with concerns to fishing etc.  The main point to take home from this: Sharks are not dangerous....  The media have given them this image and more people are killed by Coca - cola machines each year than sharks. Right dive trip done we headed back to Bangkok, ready to leave Thailand and completely happy with our experience.  One of the guys on our trip Adam offered us a place to stay (he is studying in Bangkok) and we headed to his.  Towards the evening i started to feel poorly again and decided i would rather my own place to stay or more to the point a private bathroom and me and Zo headed to a guest house... i enjoyed the last couple of days in Bangkok on antibiotics from the doctor for a tummy bug :) We flew Bangkok to Hong Kong, three hours later Hong Kong to Kathmandu.  A very interesting flight mainly spent in the toilet (still ill), but an even more interesting experience within our first hour of Nepal.  We landed and soon realized we had to buy a Visa, we also realized that we had forgotten to bring any money and at 10:00pm had to find an ATM .  We asked the guys at security where the nearest ATM was in the airport and if it were possible for us to visit it so that we could buy a visa and legally enjoy our stay in Nepal.  We headed in the direction pointed out by security and ended up outside of the airport and standing in front of a closed ATM, we are then approached by some Nepalese guys who offered to lend us 30 dollars each for our visa and then after we bought the visa and picked up our luggage would drive us to the ATM to return the money... hmmm.  We ended up super lucky and before leaving Bangkok arranged a hostel and an airport pickup in Nepal (very organised for us) and very kindly the guy who came to pick us up agreed to take us to an ATM.  So there we were outside of the airport, into Nepal and heading 5KM away to the nearest ATM without a visa, and without our luggage.  We were returned to the airport waltzed passed security, attempted to pay for our visa with the rupees we had withdrawn and were told that it had to be paid in any other currency than Nepalese Rupees!! We had to go back outside and change the Rupees into US dollars and then buy the visa!!  We picked up our bags, past the non existent security and headed to our hostel, overall a very interesting experience...the airport being my favorite, literally a few empty looking rooms and then Nepal :) So Nepal, what have we been up to ?  Not much :P  i have had a bad tummy for a few days and have generally been feeling rubbish so have just been resting mainly.  We have ventured out a few times though mainly to eat and i LOVE Nepal so far.  Everyone is friendly, the food is amazing (all you can eat curry, rice and chutneys for 80pence), and there is a superb atmosphere about the place (Zoe says it reminds her of Moroco a little).  It reminds me of getting back to some proper traveling, Thailand was super easy, especially the south which is basically the new Ibiza / Spain, and Nepal is offering a bit more of a challenge again.  An interesting fact about Nepal is the electricity situation, basically the country has been divided up into 6 sections, each section receiving electricity for 4 hours a day on rotation ....each section receives electricity at different times of the day depending on the day of the week.  I'm currently typing in the dark as the section I'm in already had its four hours of electricity around mid day and at 6:45pm most places (such as this Internet cafe) are lit with one light bulb running off of a generator.  This Internet cafe is allowing three PCs to be run at anyone time :) Our first hostel did not have water so we moved, it was a very nice place (due to be knocked down in a week), but we fancied a shower and moved closer to the center of town.  Being poorly has not been a bad thing it has allowed us to plan our time in Nepal or more to the point a trek :)  Being low on funds at the end of 9 months traveling we have decided to go out with a bang and complete a 20 day trek on our own...the Annapurna Circuit.  A lot of  people hire guides and porters, but it is possible to do it on your own and that is what we have decided to to...the final challenge almost, in amazing year that we have had traveling.  We have been researching the route in a book we have bought, stocked up on some trekking gear, registered with the correct agencies, and purchased the required trekking permits.  The highest point of the trek being 5416m (17,769 ft) we are also aware of the risks of altitude sickness and have planned our trip accordingly sticking to the rule "trek high, sleep low" setting the route out accordingly.  We will be experiencing sub tropical and alpine conditions, getting a first class view of the Himalayas and apparently the highest point is four times higher than Ben Nevis :) So thats our plan, and after a couple of days sightseeing in Nepal...... .... through the magic of the Internet we have just finished the couple of days sight seeing :)  What did we sight see? We visited Durbar Square, an area filled with some stunning architecture, temples, cows and locals selling their wares.  Pashupatinath temple was an eyeopener for us, we decided to find our own way there without another tourist in sight, through very poor areas, in spite of all this we felt completely comfortable and when lost the locals provided guidance with a smile :)  It is a Hindu temple and the eyeopener for us was the cremations taking place at the side of the Bagmati river...families could be seen throughout the day (we saw three) walking a recently deceased relative to the edge of the river...i say recently, they cremate a person on the same day that they die.  They place the person on a stack of wood, pay their respects and set fire to the wood, it was a very interesting experience but at the same time we felt very uncomfortable being their as families were saying goodbye to there loved ones.  We also visited Boudhanath one of the holiest Buddhist sites in all of Nepal, it contained the largest ancient stupa in the whole of the world, and if you don't know what a stupa is...take a gander at my pictures :) So thats our sightseeing in Kathmandu, we are planning to bus our way over to Pokhara tomorrow (a seven hour bus) and we will then begin a 20 day trek..loverly.  Plans after that is to see how far our money can stretch and how many cities we can visit in India before flying home from Mumbai... i think we have a couple of months left :) The next time you hear from me i will have completed the Annapurna circuit and will let ya know all about it... Yey! i hear you cry hmmmmm. Books read... just a couple since the last blog: Graham Greene - The end of the Affair... a bit different to my usual read, but i whizzed through it and enjoyed it thoroughly none-the less Dan Brown - The Da Vinchi Code.... Bloody brilliant, but I'm sure a lot of you know that already! Once again grab all of our pics from here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/discozo/sets/ Be happy Tom :)
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1235738280/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1235738280/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1235738280/tpod.html Sat, 28 Feb 2009 04:16:05 -0500 Where is tom dot com

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Ko Phangan, Thailand

Ay up!Going to jump straight into it ohhh yarr.... We left Bangkok for the infamous "islands" of Thailand and the infamous lush beaches and parties on said beaches.  Before we left however we said goodbye to Mike (as mentioned in the last blog) and also swapped a few books in preparation.  We had two options: A) Fly to Ko Samui B) bus and boat it.... obviously coming to the end of our trip (8 1/2 months out of 12) we decided to bus and boat it.  All in all not a bad trip and leaving Bangkok in the evening i slept on the bus getting up for the three hour ferry ride taking us to our first island destination "Koh Tao" A gorgeous island (from the very little we managed to see) and an amazing week.  The first island of our southern Thailand adventure, for us was all about diving.  This is why we chose Koh Tao being one of the cheapest places to get qualified, and although they churn through students quicker than Kentucky Fried Cruelty churn through chickens, it had been well recommended.  Our first task was to find a dive school, not much of a difficulty as five of the main schools had reps on the ferry.  We quizzed them all and narrowed our choices down to "Big Blue" and "Big Bubble" both big according to their names, but both with pros and cons.  We ended up choosing Big Blue, mainly because it had been recommended3d to us by a good friend of ours but also because as opposed to Big Bubble it was more central, closer to amenities (bookstores, cafes, etc.) and if we so wished "party time". Big Blue turned out to be an amazing choice after only 7 days in their company we felt a great sense of community with students and instructors alike.  A great bunch of people and we almost stayed to complete dive master training, involving 5-8 weeks plus of all the dives you can handle to get you to the level of dive master at a flat rate.  I say almost, we had the money (maybe just), we definitely had the time, it was a given that we had the want and energy for the task....but we could not have given up Nepal and India (as the case would have been) for the DMT experience, and instead decided to leave it as an accomplishment to be conquered further down the line. But i digress..... We arrive at Big Blue to find a mass of people and no accommodation.  The manager/owner (not sure which) Jim informing us of an unusually large amount of people on the island, due to a Swedish rap concert and the recent end of the full moon party on Koh Phangan.... meaning all hung-overs and drunkards head to Koh Tao for some detox and relax time.  So we were at the dive company we wanted but no accommodation (you get super discounts on accommodation if you stay with the dive company) they offered us a bungalow at 600 Baht (£12) the most we would have spent on accommodation in months and way over our budget, but we decided to accept for lack of an alternative and need for some rest.  We spent a good portion of time looking for cheaper accommodation and i provoked funny looks plus laughter from locals/hotel owners when asking if we could sleep on their sofa or floor for a cheap price.  In the end coming to an agreement of £4 a night with a guest house that would let us sleep on their roof in a tent.  We checked out of the bungalow the following morning ready to move into a tent, Hanging ø around Big Blue on the off chance...and thank whoever we were gifted with a cancellation and moved into an on-site beach bungalow for the same price we would have paid for the tent.  I say beach bungalow, i could have farted in the room, walked to the sea, had a dip, walked back and be in the room before the smell left...wow what a childish and disgusting analogue, gets the point across i guess though so it can stay in there :) Right so where are we.. Bangkok -> Koh Tao -> Big Blue -> beach bungalow.  Sorted, now you know where we stayed for seven nights (interesting I'm sure).  Well we were diving so i will tell you all about that yey!  Previous diving experience:Me = 4 dives, Great Barrier Reef, unqualifiedZoe = 20+ dives, open water obtained in France, advanced obtained in Australia (GBR) Bloody hell! I want to go on but i must digress a little once more:***********Quick Digression - When in Australia while we were diving off of a boat called the Anaconda 3 around the Whitsundays and The Great Barrier Reef Zoe completed her advanced scuba diving certification with AUSI - When Zoe told Jim from Big Blue that she was advanced under "AUSI", he kind of froze, looked concerned and then asked that if by any chance we had been diving on the Anaconda 3!  Now it was our turn to freeze and we were both coming around to the idea that this guy had psychic abilities until he produced an explanation. - The explanation: Recently a guy attempted to complete an advanced diving course at Big Blue with open water AUSI qualification, he was refused as AUSI is not recognized by PADI or SSI or any other dive associations..... He had received ed his AUSI certification on the Anaconda 3 as did Zoe because this is the only boat in the world that uses AUSI.  It is an old, outdated dive association that had died long ago.. the guy who owned Anaconda 3 resurrected it without telling anyone, hence the issues of recognition from PADI and SSI (Plus SSI think that he stole their course material) - Luckily for Zoe, Jim got in touch with Mr PADI Thailand and since there had been recent discussion on the topic within PADI headquarters he could say that they are not recognizing AUSI as a qualification at this time, and Zoe could do the next level of diving if she so wished with PADIEnd of digression************************************* Wow! that was titled "quick digression" not as quick as i had imagined.Right i will start with Zoe's diving..... as there were issues with AUSI and we could see possible issues in the future Zoe took a course the next level up with PADI.  She is now a PADI Rescue Diver :)  This involved: Half a day training to become an emergency responder (first aid training)... she resuscitated a dummy and got to mess around with a defibrillator at the local medical center...i say mess around i mean taught to use and lots of other first aid related things like that.  Then Zoe completed three days of classroom work / In water training (Learning to deal with panicked and unresponsive divers under the water and on the surface).  Zo loved it and I'm very proud at how well she completed the course.  You can read about her experiences under the water in her blog when she puts it up here: ZOE'S BLOG I completed two Scuba dive courses...oh and in case you did not know SCUBA stands for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus (read the last bit in a snobby / stuck up kind of voice).  First i had to decide which association to complete my courses in either PADI (most recognized) or SSI (second largest), apparently the only difference on these particular courses is that PADI require you to buy the book and SSI say you can borrow it...the effect: PADI costs 800 Baht (£16) more but you keep the book.  I chose SSI.  First the Open water, i will not bore you too much with the details of the course (as I'm sure i have to much already).  We completed the required skills such as taking your mask off, putting it back on and clearing it...the same with the regulator and lots more including buoyancy control, all the while enjoying the beautiful scenery and wildlife of our underwater classroom.  What did i see?  Spotted Rays, Butterfly Fish (beautiful yellow fish that you normally see in pairs as when they find a mate they stay with them for the rest of their lives), Gr4ouper, Flounder, Fusiliers, Parrot Fish, Squirrel Fish, Rabbit Fish, Barracuda, Potato Cod, Long fin Banner Fish, Annamae Fish, Clown Fish (Nemo's), Tuna, Angel Fish, Red Rusted Rass, Ramora (really liked these...looked like a palm sized shark and was swimming close to the tank of a fellow diver, the same way you sometimes see fish swimming under the belly of a shark), Trigger fish (Only thing we had to worry about... a descent size, very territorial, and named due to the trigger that pops up on their head when they are angered / on the attack), Plus gorgeous corals and rock structures. I completed the course which included four dives giving me the ability to dive up to 18m.  Supper addicted to this super addictive hobby (try it if you can!!) i decided to complete my Advanced diving course.  Mainly because this would then allow me to dive 30m, meaning i can dive with Zoe, but also because i love diving and wish to progress through the qualifications.  I completed this with SSI through Big Blue also and loved it, my group consisted of 6 people ..... and i have to say we bonded a lot more making the experience more special, there were three cool Norwegians (2 girls, 1 bloke), a south African girl, a Spanish guy... who happens to be one of the most interesting, though provoking and inspirational characters i have met on this entire trip and ME! The advanced course is different to the open water in that there is no classroom work / Test (I got 48 out of 50 for open water mum) and you must complete two mandatory modules (deep diving, navigation) and choose three (i chose Night dive, Buoyancy, and Nature dive).  All were good but one of my favorite modules was the night dive, firstly because of how surreal it felt from start to finish.... Jumping into the middle of the sea at night, feeling completely unaware of what was below and around you, with just the moon illuminating the seemingly black water we grouped at the front of the boat torches in hand.  As you descend you can literally see nothing but the area illuminated by the torches, it was strangely calming and i felt relaxed throughout the whole experience.  I saw stingray skirting the ocean floor, but my favorite had to be "playing god" with the very large barracuda hunting at night.  The group would train their torches on a large barracuda, our instructor would then illuminate a small fish with his...the "selected" one, within seconds the barracuda would streak forward and hit the poor thing like a hammer then disappear into the night...oh what great fun ay! hmmmm.  We descended onto the ocean floor and holding our torches to our chest, making it pitch black we played with the fluorescent plankton....as you wave your hands through the water the kinetic energy aggravates the plankton and they illuminate fluorescent green... i was Harry Potter for five minutes, whizzing my hand about with my invisible wand watching fluorescent green explode and trail behind.  Ascending to the surface, inflating your BCD and floating you go from an amazing underwater world to gazing straight up at a sky full of stars! Definitely one of my favorite dives! My other favorite dive possibly THE FAVORITE dive was my first deep dive going down to9 30m and my first ever dive with Zoe as they said she could join us.  Although both of these factors made the dive extremely special...it was something else that made it truly special, something HUGE!  Me and Zoe were Buddy's, meaning we checked each others gear before entering the water and we checked on one another in the water.  We had descended and everyone in the class completed a few tests with a pencil and a board to make sure we hadn't gone do-lally at 30m and picked up nitrogen narcosis, now taking in the schools of fish and coral while circling a giant pinnacle.  The instructor was at the front and had just cornered the pinnacle followed by two pairs of students and then me plus Zo at the back.  Just as Zo and I were about to corner the pinnacle i noticed a school of fish disappear like a firework, yellows and silvers exploded in every direction.  Then i heard a sound, which i could only place as the drawn out noise of bending metal (mrrrwarrrraarrr hahaha... you can ask me to do it in person)...anyway it was drawn out and deep, i looked at Zo w2ho had also stopped our group now leaving us around the pinnacle, we both looked out into the ocean and through the clear blue mist a giant, gorgeous, Yellow / white spotted fish approached.....  A WHALE SHARK!!!!!!!!!  WAAAA WOOOO YEAAA!!!  It was amazing!!! apparently only juvenile and coming in at just over three meters it was so graceful and i felt so lucky to see such an amazing creature (Here is a link to a whale shark video...i was meters away from one of these!!! : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQrBwN39LJI) ... one of the best experiences of my life! Full of adrenaline i raced around the pinnacle grabbed the rest of our group, we searched but it had moved on, me and Zoe being the only two out of our group to have seen it ( a couple of other groups spotted it also) it was shocking, exhilarating, breathtaking and inspirational all at the same time.  Talking to our instructor who had been diving for five years he had only seen them a few times, other people i talked with who had over 100 dives had never seen one, we were so lucky, especially lucky as it was my 12th ever dive plus my first ever dive with Zoe! Anyways...dive dive dive...enough of diving...its amazing we both love it, and i recommend for anyone with the opportunity to give it a go.  So Zoe is a rescue diver and i an ab advanced diver allowing me to dive up to 30m.  Actually a tiny bit more about diving.....The whole experience at Big Blue was unforgettable, the only bad thing being that i stubbed my toe and cut a chunk out of it (remember that...i will return to it)I think i mentioned before we are running low on money now and may have to cut our trip a little short, but we are totally happy about this because during our trip if there has been anything we wanted to do we have done it.  We haven't had to pick and choose like we should have done, we have literally done everything we wanted to do that is on offer....Talking of doing everything we want, we are now in the process of booking up a live aboard dive trip on the west coast of Thailand in the Similan islands, reportedly some of the best diving in the world.  The trip we are interested in, and will hopefully be booking is on March 6th and is a whale shark ecological research trip.  Basically finding whale sharks and taking pictures of them using underwater cameras for research purposes, the adults growing up to 12m in size...they do not complete this trip often and we happen to be in the right place at the right time so we may take the opportunity and join the three day / 9 dive trip.  It will also help me to achieve one of my goals...a "wreck dive" and explore a sunken ship.Just a side note before i carry on...actually i think this blog is almost entirely side note?!?!?  I have found from the scuba courses, cooking courses and various other activities on this trip that as i have grown older i love learning, it definitely was not a love when i was younger, but it is now (is this the same for everyone?)  I am looking forward to learning at home by taking up different courses :)Soooo we were done diving and reluctantly left Koh Tao after one party night at a beach bar and as a guy we were with said "all that is missing is a few beach balls flying around and this could be MTV" as everything seemed perfect and almost glossy...everyone dancing, stars above us, sea at the edge of the bar, really well laid out, hard to explain, but a good night had by all :)We ferried it to Koh Phangan, skipping Samui, not sure why...just not that bothered about Samui.  We had decided to use http://www.couchsurfing.com/ as we had always planned to on this trip but had somehow forgotten.  The basic concept is that you create a profile and either sleep / "surf" peoples couches, host couches top be surfed or as many people do...both.  While on Koh Tao we found 13 couches possibly available and choose to contact one, a guy called Ryan who got back to us pretty quickly.  Funnily enough he was house sitting a bungalow on the beach for a guy he had couch surfed with for two weeks.  The beauty of the concept being that you stay with people who have local knowledge, you get to meet new and interesting people and all the other little bonuses such as free accommodation, use of a kitchen etc.  So Ryan (from Canada) met us at the pier, we grabbed some mopeds and whizzed up the west coast, backpacks on your backs to just as we had ordered a a very non touristy bungalow on the beach.  We settled into the bungalow Ryan very kindly giving up his double bed for us as he slept outside in a hammock, and here we stayed for a few days enjoying the beach on the doorstep, cooking with fresh ingredients from the local market and checking out beaches in the area.My favorite day had to be an early morning motorbike ride to the start of a walking trail which led us up to the highest point of the island and an incredible view point.  We dropped our bikes off at the start of the trail and walked through the jungle, picking up our tour guide at the start.... a locals dog, the lady told us that the dog completed the trip three or four times a day, she shouted something to the gorgeous brown dog and it led us up the hill.   We were thankful to have her in the end as there is a good chance we might have got lost, traversing rocks and walking through the jungle.  I was incredibly sweaty and exhausted but glad to make it too the top and take in the stunning view of the island...the sounds in the jungle were also really cool...the random bird noises and whatever else really added to the atmosphere...plus we didn't see another tourist the whole time. Ohhh and i graduated to a bigger motor bike, will i say graduated...i had a go for a while on a dirt bike with full gears and i really, enjoyed it... i managed to pick up the gears pretty easilly and with a bit more practice i think i could handle something a bitter bigger and badder than a moped :)This night was not such a good one as i gained a high temperature, worried it may have been the start of malaria ( i was really really hot), late into the night Zoe stuck me on the back of her moped and fully into fever i shivered my tits off all the way to the hospital in the warm nights breeze.  Given paracetamol and told to return in the morning we did just that.  I went to the doctor explaining my fever (which had almost disappeared by this point) and also mentioning two worrying lumps at my waist....he checked and immediately asked if i had any cuts on my feet!  Me and Zo both looked shocked and replied yes....and remember i told you about stubbing my toe on KO Tao and cutting a chunk out of it...well being in the sand and in and out of the sea it was struggling to heal and now infected, Yum! (the lumps were swollen glands)  So under direct orders from the doctor not to go near the sea or sand and to shower with a plastic bag on my foot, i looked forward to our last week on an ISLAND! boasting gorgeous beaches and beautiful blue sea! ha ha!Its not that bad actually, I'm three days into resting, we decided not to burden our couch surfing host and move to a cheap room on the south side of the island.I no longer feel poorly and my foot is looking better and better by the day :)  I have been getting tons of reading in, and watching some 24 on the ol DVD player....and Zoe has been amazing looking after me :)So thats where we are at.  Relaxing on the south side of Koh Phangan.  We have a plane booked on March 11th to take us to Nepal, we are provisionally booked in on the dive trip i mentioned for March 6th (they will hold the place for a few days... see how my gets on), and we were going to explore some more islands until the dive trip but we figure we are now staying in a very cheap £2 each a night room next to gorgeous beaches and beautiful waters, we would just be looking for the same elsewhere...so why not just stay here until the trip or the flight :) I'm thinking we will make the trip, but we will see :)Read a few books:Another Ben Elton..this time The First Casualty.  Did not dissapoint as i find Ben never has for me...another amazing book and another one in the recommended pile.Martin Mcgartland - Dead man running.  The true story of a guy who worked for british intelligence undercover in the IRA... and then got left to fend for him self.  Interesting book...but very repetitive and because of this bored me!Michael Crichton (author of Jurrasic Park) - Rising Sun..... very very good book and i look forward to reading some more from the same author.  A detective story also looking at the economic differences between Japan and America.Love to allPictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/discozo/sets/Oooo one thing to mention about the pictures.... we upload them to Flickr as you are aware by now, and we keep them public, this means people are always getting in touch with us asking permission to use certain photos for different thing...online magazines and stuff like that.  The latest one to get used is for a Fraser Island, Australia Brochure and is me with a stupid Bob hair cut...check it out here : http://www.schmap.com/brisbane/activities_guided/#r=none&mapview=Map&tab=Places&p=135810&topleft=-27.34981,152.93724&bottomright=-27.55881,153.13019&i=135810_3.jpg Tom
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1233982560/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1233982560/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1233982560/tpod.html Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:26:05 -0500 Where is tom dot com

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Bangkok, Thailand

Since the last blog i have spent some amazing time with some animals i thought i would never get close too, oh and we are now in the south.The one but last day before we left Chiang Mai we splashed out a little on a trip to an elephant sanctuary.  It was 50 quid but worth every penny.  If you would like to read a little about the sanctuary or pick up any info i have missed out you can check it here: http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/ The sanctuary was started by a lady named Lek and aims to take care of mistreated elephants.....and that they do.  It is basically an elephant rescue center and hold a current total of 36 elephants (soon to be 39 because one of the elephants at the sanctuary was pregnant and they day after we visited they were picking up two malnutritioned ele's from an elephant tour company.)  You can get all of the info you like from the web site above regarding the park and the elephants...so save me blabbing on about it i will just tell you about our experience.After getting picked up we started the trip with a quick stop at the market where we helped to load up a truck full of bananas....back on the road we headed for the park.  On arrival we were given safety instructions such as "don't jump into the elephants field without supervision" etc etc.  And our first contact with these amazing animals was made.  We sat and watched them walking around their field, some of the more inquisitive (or hungry) elephants came right up to us and we could pat their heads and rub their trunks.  It was a special experience and i could tell Zo was super happy by the fact that she had tears of joy welling up in her eyes! I can tell you about a couple of the elephants quickly... Maximus a super lanky looking Ele (my favorite) had a very damaged front leg.  he used to be a street begging elephant and while maneuvering the traffic of Chiang Mai or Bangkok wherever he happened to be an 18 Wheeeler crashed into him.  One elephant was completely blind where after not responding to the owner during logging work in the Forest she was shot in the eye with a slingshot....after further refusal to work the owner then stabbed her other eye out.... luckily for the elephant the sanctuary found her and took her in (she has made friends with another resident at the sanctuary and uses her as a giant guide elephant).  Plus an elephant that had stood on a land mine! After watching these beautiful creatures for a while it was time to feed them.  You get a large basket of bananas and corn and you can hand the elephants the food directly to their trunks, ensuring that you don't tease them or hold onto the food for too long because just like us they can get grumpy and unlike us they can knock you down pretty easily with their heavy trunks.  Well we fed them for a while still in awe of how close these beautiful animals were to us, patting them on the head and taking some pics.  One elephant liked to kiss you (or had learned to kiss visitors) by putting his trunk up to your face and sucking your cheek!  Although it stank, i liked it :) After our own grub (a scrumptious buffet) we headed to the river, here we were allowed to get in the river with the Elephants and bathe them... you could choose a brush or a bucket and either scrub or splash them.  I think this was my favorite part of the day being able to rub the side of an Elephant, with the added excitement of trying not to get crushed (we had some key tips.. if they run, you run, don't stand by their feet in the water) After this we were shown a very very interesting documentary about the history of the park and then more importantly information on how elephants are being mistreated and how we can avoid supporting it.  The elephants used for street begging, or football shows, or the ones that have "developed" the skill of painting a portrait are the ones that should not be supported.  These elephants are trained in a cage some times for three or more days, where their spirits are broken by repeated orders while they are repeatedly stabbed and tortured until they learn to obey their owner.  Other than this their is the added risk of traffic etc when street begging.  It was a heart breaking video to watch but at least something is being done about the issue. After bathing the elephants we all stood on a raised platform to allow a baby elephant to bathe.  Apparently the mother and auntie are super protective so no one other than their mahout are permitted to get close or they can attack (fair enough!) a mahout being the Indian term for an elephant trainer.  All of the elephants have their own mahout that look after them (what a job ay!).  We watched the baby with a super funky hair style bathe and then returned to the center, the afternoon being pretty much a repeat of the morning with more feeding and more bathing. It was an amazing experience and one of my highlights for Thailand definitely, if you do visit Northern Thailand i would recommend skipping the elephant riding and visiting the sanctuary, to stop the cruelty of these beautiful animals!  If you have more time (and a little more money) than we had you can spend days, a week or even months volunteering, helping with the day to day chores required to run an elephant sanctuary. Sooo we saw, touched and enjoyed the company of the giant beasts and spent one More day in Chiang Mai.  Zoe and Mike Internet-ed.  I wandered the city for hours, just walking out into the surrounding areas to take in the last of Chiang Mai.  I stumbled on a small market and bought a new bad as mu last one had a broken zip and had been chewed to buggery by a rat.  I bought a man-bag!  thats right you heard me a man bag!  You may start to see it in a few photos, not sure how keen i am but Zoe says it looks good, so i will stick with it for a while.... plus it was only three quids so i can pass it on if i don't like it :) One of the nights in Chiang Mai, i left mike and Zo on the internet and sat reading my book with a beer.  I got chatting to a Thai guy who sang their with his band, very funny guy...you can see him in the picture to the right of Zoe.  Anyway i got chatting to him and somehow arranged for Zo to sing...as a loverly surprise for her.  She did and it was brilliant :) We left Chiang Mai on a 10 hour night bus, waking up to Bangkok.  We decided we were not ready to go from big city to big city and needed to enjoy a smaller town first, so after a quick inspection of the lonely planet we decided to head straight to a town west of Bangkok called Kanchanaburi, very close to the Myanmar (Burma) border.  The original plan was to head even further towards Burma to a border crossing called the "Three Pagodas Pass" Here you used to be able to (it closed last Feb) cross into Burma for the day, leaving your passport on the border, not anymore.  So slightly disappointed we are only going as far as Kanchanaburi. We spent a couple of days in Kanchanaburi and other than relaxing in the very chilled out back garden of the hostel we have been to two very interesting sights.The first being the Bridge on the river Kwai, interesting because of the history.  I'm sure as soon as you started reading the paragraph many of you are aware of the bridge i am talking about because it was made famous by a British 1957 world war film.  You can read about the movie and the actual history of the bridge here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_on_the_River_Kwai  We looked at the bridge, took a short 15 minute train journey across the bridge and took photos of the bridge :)  Referring back to the start of this blog, while crossing the bridge we also seen a very skinny and very stressed out (it was pacing) street begging elephant, with the owner offering tourists the opportunity to feed or take photos of the poor thing for money :(We had rented motorbikes and after checking out the bridge headed to a temple.  The temple is one of the main reasons we decided to come to this town, and I'm glad we did.  The temple is called "Tiger Temple"... getting an idea of what its about now yarrr....actually you can already tell from the photos?Well there are a load of tigers there.  We liked the sound of it because it is not a zoo.  It was set up by monks a few years back, when they adopted a tiger cub whose mum had been shot when wandering into a village.  hey have adopted more tigers who mothers have fallen to the same fate.  So i say it is not a zoo.... it was  little more like a zoo than we excpected unfortunately  The tigers basically spend most of the day having their photos taken with tourists.  We did this and it involved stroking the amazing animals, with the protection of a handler...i say protection, its a bloke who has the tiger on a chain, if any of the tigers wanted to lash out they could.  I had a chat with on of the handlers and they explained that the tigers are most active at night, and when we get to touch them etc they have just been fed so they feel lazy...hmmmm.  The main point that makes the whole project worthwhile is their claim to be building a tiger sanctuary called "tiger island", basically when they have made enough money from tourists to complete the island, the tigers will no longer need to spend the day having their photo taken and they will be released into their new habitat, a simulated environment based on where they would be in the wild.  I really hope this happens and they don't continue to use the tigers for tourism.  Another reassuring point made by one of the handlers, although i have not checked into this... is that there are only 300 wild tigers left in Thailand and this sanctuary is the best place for them.... I'm not sure it is.  Oh i did want to say... I'm not sure if anyone has seen a photo i think it was in national geographic or something similar, of a tiger surrounded by a million tourists, its completely wrong....well this kinda reminded me of that because there was one tiger surrounded by 30 people..i took a pic so i will put it up for you to see (actually cant find it so will put it up when i do).....if anyone knows what photo I'm on about, let me know :)So hopefully they will get the island completed and the tigers can roam free, i hope it happens soon because they are also actively breeding the tigers.  If you do fancy getting up close and personal with them before they are taken to the island you can volunteer, it is completely free and includes food and accommodation... all they ask is that you can offer a minimum of one month and be willing to put all of your effort into looking after the tigers and the tiger cubs....me and Zo would love to have done this but unfortunately we don't have enough time left in Thailand...plus we were happy with the one day experience :)They day after tiger temple, and still having the motor bike until 9:00AM i woke up early and hit the road at 6:30am, well me and Mike hit the road.  I had a load of petrol left, plus i love the riding :)  It was lovely and quiet, whizzing through the backstreet's towards the countryside.  After a gorgeous morning view from a bridge out of town, some much needed directions and more country roads we made it to the perfectly named "giant tree".  It was bloody massive, you can see from the pics how big it is compared to me, i sat there for 20 Min's just taking it in, and then gave it a quick hug and kiss before jumping back on the bike and racing to town to make the 9:00am deadline :)  BrilliantAfter sometime, swimming, Reading and relaxing we decided we were ready for Bangkok and arranged a morning bus.  Thats where i am writing this from now, in a small cramped Internet cafe, and i cant wait to leave it... the Internet cafe that is,  just getting my photos uploaded will write this then will be treating myself to some scrummy street grub.  So bangkok, as i said tasty street food, especially the treats on sticks and the Pad Thai...not only scrummy but super cheap, with pad Thai coming in at a whopping 45pence.  The markets dotted around town also offer some cheap clothes, with decent t-shirt designs coming in at 2 - 3 quid a t-shirt.. i have bought a few and sent them home, telling myself I'm saving for the future ;)  At night while wandering the markets and eating way too much food you can also spot a few street elephants used for begging.  A very distressing sight, especially the elephant i saw last night who seemed to be crying.  You see them surrounded by pissed up Westerners taking photos and paying the owner to feed it, a very distressing sight was to see one guy taunting the poor bugger, by hiding the food every time he went for it :(  I think the main problem is education...people see it as being fun, but without knowing how distressed the poor animal is....DON'T SUPPORT STREET ELEPHANTS!What else have we been up to in Bangkok... hmmm, doesn't seem like much actually.  We have wandered a lot, just taking in the city, without actually going to many sights.  We did visit the Grand Palace... i say visit, we looked at it from out side seeing as they were charging a stupidly high price for the experience.  We saw a massive, and i mean massive reclining Buddha at Wat Po, which i personally found to be very impressive... i even prostrated towards the Buddha as a mark of respect.  I wandered on my own around china town, quiet a walk and very enjoyable.... no one else fancied it, but i think being on my own added to the experience for me.  Me and Zoe headed to an art gallery quite far out of town, making use of their monorail aka "sky-train" to get there.  Unfortunately the graffiti and urban art show we had gone looking for had finished but we had fun nonetheless and ended up in the cinema watching underworld.. anyone seen it? i thought the action was really good, but the story was pretty boring. We have watched a bunch of film s as our hostel shows three films a day also :)So thats been pretty much it.. oh there was one other thing that I'm trying to forget.. a "ping pong" show. ***PARENTAL ADVISORY -PING PONG SHOW DESCRIPTION***  I'm sure everyone knows what that entails...and being in Bangkok we felt we had to experience it! From the tourist areas there are  lot of touts trying to get you to a ping pong show, we decided to find one ourselves in the hope that we would not get ripped off, or should i say ripped off too much as it is kind of excpected!  Well anyways we headed to the go-go girls / strippers / ping pong show area of Bangkok, stopping off for a bite to eat on the way (not sure that was a good idea).  We managed to find the correct area, and were immediately approached by a tout, so without having much option we negotiated a price.  He offered to let us in to see if we liked the venue or not, and then we could decide if we wanted to stay.... this seemed a bit sketchy but we decided to follow him and take him up on his offer of free entry and 100 Baht (just under 2 quid) for a drink... expensive in Thailand but we decided it was fine seeing as we didn't have to pay entry.  We were let into a seedy little club with a long stage in the middle of the room and tables surrounding, checking with the lady serving the drinks that they were in fact 100 Baht we settled in for a pretty gruesome show.  The stage had five strippers, all topless, the one in middle completely naked and it went like this: lady-boy, girl, Large girl, girl, lady-boy (from left to right, or i guess right to left).  The first stunt involved the large girl in the middle removing razor blades... lovely, this was followed by more of the same, ribbons, blowing out candles, smoking, oh and we had a banana fired at us.yey.  This was pretty disturbing but we decided to enjoy our drinks nonetheless until we were surrounded by the management (two very aggressive Thai ladies), they then produced a card that looked like the following:----------------------------------FIRST DRINK = 300 BahtSHOW = 1000 BahtTotal = 1300 Baht --------------------------So they were trying to get us to pay 26 quid as opposed to the advertised 2 quid.  There argument being that they have nothing to do with the tout that led us in...even though the lady who served us our drinks did confirm the price of 2 quid.  We expected it, so we downed our drinks, while the ladies continued to shout at us, at one point one of them lent forward and aggressively poked Zoe...that was the final straw so we chucked 100 Baht each on the table and walked out refusing to pay...nothing much came of it apparent from getting shouted at and i was pretty glad to be out of there.So I'm working on erasing that show from my memory and will be having a relatively quiet night.. a nice meal to say good bye to Mike.  We have been traveling with him for 2 months now!!!  The longest we have traveled with anyone this entire trip.  Tomorrow we are going to head south towards the islands and mike has decided to fly into Burma (Myanmar).So the next time you will be hearing from me will be the islands and hopefully i will have started my scuba diving course :)Read a few of really good books.Dan Brown - Deception point, really really really bloody good, it does mean I'm now going to have to read Da Vinchi Code / Angels and Demons because i love his style of writing!  This book was super suspenseful and i whizzed through it, reading at every opportunity.Ben Elton - Blast from the past.... yes another Ben, and yes a bloody good book, not my favorite but enjoyable nonetheless.Amit Gilboa - Off the rails in Phnom Penh.... very interesting look into the dark side of cambodia, the subtitle reads "guns, girls and ganja" so you ger the idea...very interestign read.Hope you have enjoyed the read.. i have a feeling this entry is not too good as i have been tired and not really up for writing it every time i have sat at the computer!  Love to allTomOnce again - All the the pictures here: http://flickr.com/photos/discozo/sets/
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Chiang Mai, Thailand

Hooo Khave not blogged for a long while... it seems like an age away since i sat down and wrote about my trip even though it was only just over 2 weeks ago!  Well we went to Pai and that's why i am sitting here now to tell you all about it :) The road to Pai was super windy and we were slightly hung over after a really funny night in a really crappy night club called spicy.  I say crappy, i mean seedy, full of prostitutes of questionable sex and seedy looking men, plus the drinks were expensive.  A strange feature of the nightclub was the 2 blokes that hang out in toilet... let me explain, sooo i was standing next to the urinal happily making myself a little lighter when the first of the two guys grab me from behind.... stay with me because if you leave now you might have some bad thoughts about what i have been up to in Thailand....the first guy grabs me around my neck, the second guy gets to work on my free arm... and they do some pretty rough massage, i had to tell them to stop because i couldn't concentrate on the task at hand plus the bloke was shaking me all over the place.  They stop and then continue as i am washing my hands... it was a bloody good massage, they popped all my fingers, cracked my neck, cracked my back in a few places and afterward i felt refreshed.... its based on a tip service and i chucked them some cash. Anyways the road to Pai was windy and i was slightly hung over... luckily Mike (who we are still traveling with) had a headphone jack and i let him DJ for me the whole way, lovely!  We spent a total of four days in Pai and a week just outside of Pai (5 KM) on an organic farm, first i will let you know about the experience we had staying in the center of town.  Pai itself is very very very chilled out, its so chilled out you seem to get very little done but have a great time doing it.  The surrounding mountains and rivers running by make it very scenic and adds to the atmosphere of a very relaxed little place, and if somehow you are not relaxed enough there are also some natural hot springs you can spend the evening in while watching the stars.  The beautiful scenery aside you have lots of small cafes, bookshops, shops and activities to keep you occupied.   On the first night we decided to take a wander around the night market that brings the main street alive at around 8:00pm the art gallery had a band playing (we found out they have someone playing every night), this night it was a fuzzy haired lady with a voice like Oscar the grouch...very different, good for a song or two but that was my limit!  The trumpet player was the coolest looking Thai bloke i have ever seen ( i will put a pic on this blog).  We finished the night by going to a Shisha bar.... i am sure most of you know what a shisha is but just in case it is also known as a "hubbly bubbly" or "hookah" basically a glass jar filled with water and pipes running through it, on top of this a hot charcoal covering a ceramic cup full of flavored molasses, which is what you smoke.  It is tobacco free and lots of fun as other than the fruity flavor it gives you (we had apple) there is lots of smoke so you can take some funky photos. We started the second day at around 12:00 with a cooking course, it was super laid back as was head chef Tee a very welcoming and chilled out Thai guy.  He explained all of the ingredients very thoroughly and gave us time to take it all in.... there were 5 of us on the days course and each person made three different dishes.  I made a massaman curry (bloody loverly), coconut soup and stir fried holy basil, Zoe cooked up Phanang curry, glass noddle salad and a Phad Thai... all of the food was gorgeous and we prepared everything including the curry paste.  I can not wait to get home and use my new Thai cooking skills....some of you are in for a treat... hopefully.  After cooking for lunch we had a 3 hour break and came back to cook up a storm for dinner with the main rule "After adding each ingredient to the wok you must take a swig of beer".  It was amazing fun and i recommend to anyone heading to Pai to see Tee and take his cooking course, at the end of the day we sat and chatted while tasting each others food... oh and Tee also quizzed us on the days teaching.  If you got a question wrong you had to drink a stupidly large shot of whiskey, the night continued on this theme with lots more drinking games Tee got his shisha pipe out and then we went to the local bar to play pool, chat and dance like idiots to crappy music :) The next day we met up with Tom Mills, as we both happened to be in the same town again, this time only for a day, and also the last time we will be seeing him on this trip :(  He had already sourced out a really beautiful fishing spot and after renting mopeds (2 pound a day!) we followed him through windy paths and dirt tracks to a hidden fishing spot just outside of town.  It was really beautiful and for a super cheap price you could rent a rod, buy bait and snacks and fish, they also have hammocks so for fish friendly people like Zoe who are not interested in snagging a hook in the poor little buggers lip, you could sit and relax the day away with a book.  We fished and chatted and caught nothing... Tom gave me a lesson on the basics of rod use.... he was very patient and a good teacher although he kept calling me son, he also swore that he had caught some catfish the day before but after catching nothing ourselves i was not quite sure...plus he somehow forgot to take a picture of the supposed catch :P After a fish-less day we whizzed back into town and back to Tees place... hes very welcoming and if you have done a cooking course you can arrange to come back the next day and cook yourself some dinner to practice your skills, the kitchen is in his house so me Zoe and Mike cooked again and then we all dug into the tasty grub, Tom included.  The night ended with a movie in one of the private movie rooms you can rent in town and we said fair well to Mr Mills until our return home. After enjoying the previous days fishing and determined to catch something me and Mike zoomed back out to the lake while Zoe spent the morning in a Yoga class.  We treated ourselves to some fresh coffee and the owner of the lake set up his rod next to ours and gave us some tips... after some chatting they offered us a room by the lake at a stupidly discounted rate (Very nice people), we told them we might pop back after the farm (unfortunately this did not happen) oh and unfortunately we did not catch anything this time either!  But i did leave Pai feeling super relaxed and ready for some hopefully intense manual labor.... Off to the organic farm :) We heard about the farm word of mouth from a girl who shared our tree house in Laos, the basic deal is that you pay a low rate for a room, or in our case your own little bamboo bungalow and you are free to work as much or as little as you want.  I went there with the full intention of getting stuck in, partly for the exercise and a stupid as it sounds partly for the want to work.  We met the relaxed owner and then were guided around the farm by a very nice french lady currently staying called Christine, we were allowed to choose from 6 different bungalows or the dorm... each bungalow created by the super cool, super relaxed and very funny owner Sandot and his crew.  Each bungalow had been created in the style of a different hill tribe, one was made of mud, most were made of bamboo, one had a fire pit inside the bungalow and they all had their own little personalities...... we choose one with a gorgeous view of the Thai countryside, a double bed, a hammock, a small fore pit with a kettle, a toilet that looked like a throne (also with a gorgeous view) and a shower that cascaded water along three different logs before it refreshed you.  After dropping off our bags we returned to the main campfire and kitchen area to enjoy a night time fire and some local made Thai whiskey poured from a bamboo cane / flask by the local Thai guys... this ended up being a regular routine most nights on the farm.... not getting drunk but a couple of shots of whiskey and some music / chatting around the fire. Before going on i just want to set the scene of the farm.  You have the many bungalows i have already told you about dotted around, taking about 30 minutes for you to walk around from hut to hut.  Mixed among this there is a swimming pool (read: pond that you can swim in), a nursery, vegetable patches, fruit trees, Cotton trees, and other various organic treats.  Everything is made using natural products (mainly bamboo).  The bowls we ate from were bamboo, the chop sticks or spoons we used were bamboo, we cooked over a campfire, the fire tongs were bamboo, the cups were bamboo, we washed the dishes using the husk of a coconut as a scrubbing brush dipped in ash from the campfire as washing up liquid.  Sandot was currently in the process of building a loom so that he can weave his own materials.  Most of the guys on the farm were Thai and it was nice to be outnumbered by locals.... over the week that we stayed on the farm we bumped into a total of 6 or 7 Westerners on the farm grounds (maybe a few more but no more than 6 or 7 stick in my mind)  most night we spent around the campfire, they all liked to play instruments and sing so the atmosphere felt really special and not something that the average tourist gets to join in with or experience.  I'm finding it really had to put into words the average night time scene but the words i would use include music, dancing, strange instruments, local whiskey, special, laughing... you might get a better description of this scene from Zoe's blog but i think i have got my point across.... i loved it :)  We picked up some Thai... the main phrase used was mainly "Nit Noi" to express "only a little bit" when they were offering us whiskey. The first full day on the farm we were up early enjoying some galangal (root vegetable, similar to ginger) tea around the fire waiting to find out what work was available from Sandot.  We didn't see Sandot but noticed some of his workers jumping in a blue pick up truck and used sign language to express our interest in joining them, that we did and headed out of the farm in the back of the truck.  Pai tended to be very misty and cold in the morning so it definitely woke us up cruising along the road on the truck, we turned off into a field, drove through more fields until we ended up next to a wooded area.  We spent the rest of the morning helping the guys by carrying the bamboo and logs they had cut down with their machetes to the back of the truck and loading it up, trying my best not to think about the possibility of scorpions under the bark, snakes and/or spiders in the grass!  After working up a semi sweat we were back on the farm unloading the collected mass of wood to be used for projects such as the building of a tree house, the building of the loom, and any other projects Sandot or anyone thinks up.....  An American guy we met while staying on the farm had the idea to build an Adobe oven using clay and traditional techniques... i believe he is at the farm building it now (as long as Sandot agreed and you had a good project plan you were free to do what you wanted).   Wood collection over with and feeling a little helpful Sandot suggested that we could De-husk some rice.... i say some rice i mean a bagful of rice and this took us up to the early afternoon.  The process consisted of putting the rice into a big wooden bowl, one person using their feet to operate this huge wooden hammer to smash the husks from the rice while another person moved the rice around in the bowl attempting not to let their fingers get smashed by the hammer.  Once this had been completed and the rice looked mostly dehusked, Sandots mum would use a sieve and a special technique to separate the rice from the husks (or at least the majority) and we could then check the remaining rice and remove the stowaway husks.  So the jobs were smashing, moving the rice and checking..... me mike and Zoe took turns on all three.  We ate some gorgeous lunch prepared by Sandot... a collection of "forest leaves" as he called it, which was basically a bowl of leaves somehow prepared into a gorgeous tasting salad and also a Jack fruit salad.  I just want to say a little about jack fruit.....it is Amazing, can you get it at home??? i don't think you can....if you can i will be so happy....can someone just check in the fruit n veg section next time the go shopping...look for a jack fruit ( i will put a picture up)  it is a massive fruit and when you remove the skin and eat the center it tastes amazing...it is very spongy and seems to soak up any flavors of the dish it is used in and amplifies it with its own unique flavour...bloody lovely..jack fruit jack fruit jack fruit. We ate the amazing Jack fruit (did i mention this) and then after a lazy hour or so set about looking for some more work.... Cotton picking!  Sandot has some trees dotted around the farm that produce super soft super easy to pick cotton, me and Zoe spent a lazy afternoon hunting down these trees and collecting the cotton, all the time avoiding the spiders and the many red ants that gave me many bites who love the trees.  Collection completed we removed the seeds from the cotton buds (stored ready for re-planting) and put the cotton into a basket ready to be used when the loom is completed!  We ate a tasty curry for dinner... anyone can cook and we all tended to take turns on the various days and cook up enough food for everyone to share around the campfire. The second day started with a very different fruit, the star fruit.  So called because when you slice it width ways it looks like a star... has a very sour taste (which i became addicted too) and i looked at the fruit as natures attempt at sour sweets (or candy if your American).  We spent the morning collecting the fruit from the trees, Zoe climbing them, me using a bamboo pole to knock them from the tree and Mike doing much of the same.  We washed and chopped them (bloody loads of them), and then while me and larone attempted to remove as much juice from the pulp, Zoe and mike chopped bananas...our plan, to make a shed load of star fruit and banana wine :)  Taking a break for lunch we wandered down the road with Sandot to collect some Papaya from the trees and then we all set about chipping in to make some food for everyone, mike was grating the papaya under Sandots wife's instruction, i was smashing chilies and tomatoes in the mortar and pestle and everyone was completing various other tasks to whip up a scrumptious lunch...and bloody tasty it was with a super spicy papaya salad and various other treats... we didn't have enough chopsticks until Sandot whipped out his machete and prepared some out of a bamboo cane.  All suitably full we jumped into and onto the back of Sandots jeep (Zoe took her moped and followed as she fancied a cruise) and he drove us the 5 Km into town, our mission to buy a shed load of sugar and a little bit of yeast for our wine. En-route to town we stopped off at Sandots sisters farm (all adding to the experience as most places he took us, tourists did not have access to)  We collected Thai apples (very small and taste strangely like cheese), some tarragon, bananas and passion fruit.  We also stopped in at a secret location before hitting town, it involved walking through a field and into an area covered by tarpaulin and green netting..... what did we see....something i don't think i should write about on here but if you e-mail me and i know you i will send the pictures and tell you about it :) We picked up the goodies needed for a homemade wine experience and made another unannounced stop at a friend of Sandots.   Here we watched an old lady use her loom, a very complex procedure with over 10 hours of labour producing a piece of material smaller than a sheet.  I think sandot wanted to get more ideas for the loom he was building and after a little chat with the lady she produced a roll of white string and tied a piece around each of his wrists (a tradition to express good luck to the recipient)  Surprisingly it was then my turn and i also had some string tied around my wrists .... a very personal and quite intense experience, the lady was lovely and very smiley....she said something in Thai and Sandot laughed he translated it as "she likes you" but I'm not sure that is all she said....any ways i was gifted with luck and so were the rest of the guys.  Before leaving the guy at the house led us all to a tank he had out the back he stuck his hand in a nd spent a few minutes searching for something in the dark waters... we were all quite confused at what this guy was up too, either we were watching a nutter with his hand in a sewage tank or we were about to see something cool, luckily it was a latter and out from the murky waters he pulled a soft-shell turtle!  It was large and ugly and looked terrified.. he also pulled out a baby that was very energetic and by stretching his long neck did his best to bite our host.  With Sandot as an intermediary we gathered that the turtles had been collected from the local river, they bury themselves under the mud banks and these guys come along and dig them up.  We also gathered that the turtles are there to be eaten :(  They sent us on our way with some more passion fruit and some small passion fruit plants to add to Sandots farm.  Almost ho0me we make a third unannounced stop this time at the farm of Sandots uncle, very different to sandots but also organic, his uncle was growing in mass lots of very tasty looking veggies.  We left with a bag full of onions, eggplant, lettuce, and pumpkin to cook for the nights dinner... also had a very strange tasting experience, he grew his own tea so they had damp tea leaves which they wrap around a chunk of salt and eat... i had to taste it, there was a lot of salt so that was strong but the taste of the tea still over powered it...an acquired taste I'm sure.  Finally back at the farm (don't get me wrong i loved the excursions) we boiled the star-fruit juice and bananas with a shed loada sugar, we prepared the yeast and ate around the fire leaving our concoction in a large clay jug to brew for the next 10 days. The next morning we were straight into the back of Sandots jeep again and off to a hill tribe market, had a wander and checked out the local produce... picking up only a few white clothes for the meditation camp we had booked in Chiang Mai.  The rest of the day was spent lazily making a sign that would read "Keep Pai Clean" in English and Thai.  It was for an initiative that Sandot was involved with to keep the Pai Canyon (just up the road) tidy, it was also affiliated with an up and coming reggae festival in the town.  We made the sign out of dried long grass with thin strips of bamboo used as ties (bloody handy stuff that bamboo, no wonder the pandas love it), and then painted it.  Sandot announced a trip to the hot springs, and gave us 10 minutes to grab our swimming gear.  I say "the hot springs" i don't mean the normal hot springs that you have to pay for.... i mean the secret hot spring spot that sandot knows about that you don't have to pay for :)  Back in the jeep we whizzed through some of the most gorgeous scenery i had seen so far in Pai, with green and brown leaved trees covering the mountainous skyline.  Arriving at the hot springs we chucked some eggs in a bubbling pool of water to cook while we soaked and relaxed.  I say relaxed that was after burning our feet on the way in... Sandot also knew where to find some really thick warm mud and we covered ourselves in this (noting that it can cost a lot of money to do the same in a spa).  Hmmm this is sounding really boring as I'm writing, is anyone still with me i wonder? did i lose most people three paragraphs ago or two hmmmmmmmmmm.. ..maybe i will speed up the story a little -> Left hot springs -> drove some more -> arrived at Karen village. Karen village, home of the Karen hill tribe and not surprisingly one of Sandots friends.  We all bundled out of the Jeep and into this ladies house to see the really beautifully crafted "Karen Cloth". After viewing her wares and drinking their tea, we spent a load of money on some things she had made.....me and Zoe buying a couple of scarfs, a blanket and something else i can not remember....all really cheap but also bought in the back room of the ladies house where it was made, so for me it had an immediate sense of authenticity that gave me the inability to refuse buying something.  Back on the farm, Zoe was head chef for the night and after she prepared the dish, Sandot and about 20 friends also added the dishes they cooked and we had a buffet around the fire.... this was the best night around the fire we had..... a load of Thai people singing, dancing, playing a bunch of different instruments, clapping hands, one guy was even playing the fire tongs.....and us enjoying it all and joining in where we can me and Zoe two out of five Westerners.  This night was also special for another reason... .. ... We drove into town on the motor bikes (or the designated drivers did) i was on the back of one.  Our destination, the Be-Bop bar.. we heard it was open Mic night and one of the girls at the farm was going to be singing with her band.  After watching a few acts i mentioned to Zoe that she should sing and after a hesitating moment she set the wheels in motion and spoke to the guy in charge.  After finding no one in the bar who could play guitar to any of the songs that Zoe knew (or at least anyone with the balls to play), even after an announcement, Zoe ended up singing without any instruments.  She was amazing, everyone was quiet throughout, i was super proud, she was sat on stage lit up with a microphone in front of her, and singing to the biggest crowd she has sung to yet.  Zo started off by announcing to the crowd how nervous she was and then began to sing "Feeling good" by Nina Simone, she also got the crowd involved by getting them to sing the bum-te-bum-tebum- bit....but the best thing was her voice shining out throughout the bar....at the end she had a loud applause i could tell she was super happy....a bloody good night. I think I'm going to shorten the writing down a bit as i think it may be dragging on..... Fourth day on the farm, eggy bread for brekkie on the fire, finished sign, and i set about doing some gardening.  Sandot showed me the patch of land that needed clearing and pointed me to the hoe.  He also explained that he had a bus load of around 100 students turning up to take a guided tour of the farm and would like to show them the simple life.  He wanted to know if i was fine being part of that tour and i agreed to Hoe while they walked past.  It was a strange experience, i heard a loud speaker getting closer and closer and then seen a large group of students and teachers heading towards me..... i continued to hoe and they all stood around me watching as Sandot explained something in Thai over the microphone.... i don't know if you have ever been to a museum that shows some old school farming or something similar, but if you have you will know what I'm talking about when i said i felt like one of those mechanical manikins they have doing some hoeing or digging....that was me and it was a weird experience....what made it comical was the fact that the handle for the hoe came up to my knee so i was using a midgets hoe with an audience of over 100 people! We found out that we would be playing a part in the reggae festival and the clean up Pai canyon initiative..... we also found out that this meant we were to be given staff passes and free entry to the festival ...Whoop!  Over the next couple of days we set about helping to get the Tacome Pai stand set up at the festival grounds and arrange a few things for the Pai canyon.  In between this i did some more hoeing, clearing a massive patch of land and preparing the earth for planting (i unearthed a couple of large frogs hiding deep in the dirt ?!?!?), oh and we seen some elephants bathing in the river while we helping at the reggae grounds. Right so the Pai canyon clean up initiative was happening the next day, Sandot had given a couple of us the task of constructing a curtain to cover the sign we had made at the canyon.  The plan being that the Governor (Governor of what I'm not sure...but apparently a pretty important bloke) was to pull a string with Sandot on the morning of the clean up and reveal the sign.  We came up with the idea of creating a curtain full of leaves that when released would reveal the sign..... simple in theory, not so simple in practice.  Me, Mike and Casey (American Girl), wa;lked the 35 minutes to the canyon and started to prepare our curtain (Zoe and Larone were flyering the vent in town...oh and making the flyer's)... we gathered large leaves from the surrounding trees and began to thread them onto fishing wire we had attached to a piece of wood.  We then strung this wood over the top of the sign and tied it off against a tree.  We had probably managed to string up half of the leaves when the sunset...and then hitch hiked back to the farm.  Oooo i forgot to mention, when we were first on the farm we had mopeds rented but then soon realised how easy it is to hitch hike around the area...me and zo e dropped our bike into town and within 30 minutes we back on the farm after catching a ride with a super friendly Thai family....everyone is so friendly...a bike really is not necessary if you are not in a rush to get anywhere. The morning of the festival and the Clean up Pai event (Which I'm now going to call CUP event) me Zoe and mike woke at 6:00am and after a quick swig of galangal tea walked back up to the canyon.... as the curtain was not finished and the event would be starting in a few hours.  We strung on the rest of the leaves, hoisted up the curtain and tied it off to the tree.  After realising the wood was not long enough (we only had a few hours to create the bloody thing) we had the idea of tying off some of the string to the surrounding trees to try and cover more of the sign....my main concern being that when the Governor released the rope the whole thing would swing around and whack him in the head.... Well we got it finished and had our fingers crossed as the crowds started to arrive (i didn't look amazing but i think it was a good effort in the short time given to us).  So the crowd was quite a large one, including a descent amount of guys from the army, students, head of police and of course sandot and the Governor.... all of these people gathered around our sign and our possible death trap of a curtain.  After a few speeches Sandot and the Governor pulled the rope... to our surprise and luck the curtain fell from the sign and suspended in the air just above the ground (sheer luck due to the way we had tied the last of the fishing line in attempt to cover more lettering)...looking very professional, oh and there was also a cheer from the crowd and some clapping. Yey!  Of course the whole sign and curtain business was not as important as the actual event and we spent a couple of hours wandering the canyon collecting rubbish.  We ate pork, rice and chillies from banana leaves for lunch and headed back to the farm to rest before the festival.We started the festival off with some more homemade Thai whiskey, it comes served in plastic bags you would wrap your sarnies in for about 80 pence... we got two of these bags and it was plenty for five of us.  After walking down to the grounds, in between listening to the music, exploring the site and chatting to people our task was to show the simple life.  Our area was like an oasis in the field set out for the festival...the field consisted of the main stage, an entrance bridge over a river and the perimeter occupied by food stalls and beer tents.  Bang in the middle of the field with a perfect view of the stage was our area....pretty much a mini mock up of the kitchen and fire area of the farm smack in the middle of the festival.  It almost felt like we were still on the farm and the festival had been brought to us.  I was smashing Soy beans in a large mortar and pestle to make soy milk, along with making more star fruit juice.  Other activities around the fire from the gang included pumpkin soup, sticky rice and general chat to the crowds that were drawn to our oasis about the farm.  It was a really goood night and a really good way to say goodbye to the gang from the farm...as we had plans to leave for Chiang Mai in the morning.So overall an amazing time in Pai...or just out of Pai, we loved it so much we are thinking we may extend our Thai visa and go back...it just means shaving a week or two off of India...and its just a plan so it may or may not come about...we will see :)So we left Pai, and i was already missing it on our way out of the city, but i was also slightly apprehensive about our next little adventure in Chiang Mai.  We had booked ourselves, or rather i had booked everyone on a meditation course within a temple on the outskirts of Chiang Mai.  We spent the day before preparing ourselves by buying up some cheap white clothing, toiletries and all the items we would need for our six night stay.........The Location: Wat Phradhatu Doi Suthep Rajavoravihara, and as quoted by the temple its self "if you have not visited Doi Suthep you have not been to Chiang Mai" well we decided to do one better and live there.  It is situated on a holy Buddhist site, and if you would like to read more about the site its self click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Doi_SuthepWe were there for a short stay to experience and gain some knowledge of Insight meditation or Vipassana (Vi = clearly, passana = to see)  The idea of the mediation to see clearly your own body and mind.  The main theme of the meditation is to be mindful, you are attempting to be mindful of the present and bring your mind and body together.  If you think that your mind can be in the future, the past, on the moon, in bristol, in Thailand....your body can only be in one place, the idea is to bring your mind to the same place as your body by being mindful about your actions at the present time...I'm not sure i explained that clearly enough but it should be come apparent when i describe our meditation training.Our daily schedule was very relaxed with only a few appointments needing to be attended and the rest of the time free to be used how you liked.  The first day we started in the afternoon, first we dropped off our bags in our rooms, my room was large and empty, only containing some blankets and a small thin mattress in one corner.  We then attended an opening ceremony... there was one other person starting on that day, so including me, Zoe and Mike it made 4 of us, taking the total number of meditaters at the retreat to 12 people.  The opening ceremony involved us prostrating to the image of Buddha, chanting, lighting candles / incense and listening to the monk.  At the end of the ceremony he explained to us two meditation techniques and left us to practice for the rest of the day.From here on out my daily schedule was pretty much the same every day.  I would wake at around 4:00 am, meditate for 30 minutes (it was increased to 40 minutes per session after the third day....and now i am OK to meditate 50 - 60 minutes at a time) after this i would normally get a herbal tea or something....actually i will put it in a table for you:4:00am: Wake4:30 - 5:00: Meditate5:00 - 5:45: break (get a herbal tea, wander the temple, rest in the garden etc)5:45 - 6:15 Meditate7:00am: Breakfast8:00am Dhamma talk9:00 - 11:00 meditation with breaks11:00: lunch 11:45 - 3:00 meditation with breaks3:00 Reporting3:00 - 6:00pm Meditation with breaks6:00pm optional chanting until 8:00pm at the temple then the rest of the night to meditate.So that was the basic structure of my day... i will talk a little bit about each of the elements but first i will let you into the rules: - No killing (spiders, ants etc) - No stealing - No sexual or romantic activity - No Wrong Speech (lying, swearing, talk to other meditators, unnecessary talk) - Refrain from intoxicants (no smoking, no coffee or caffeine, no drinking, no drugs) - Refrain from overeating (we were not allowed to eat after mid day, so that left 19 hours after lunch with no food until breakfast the next day) - Refrain from beautification and diversion (No music, reading, writing, phones, Internet etc) - Refrain from over sleeping (no more than 6 hours sleep a night)There were other requirements but these were more adhering to Thai culture and respecting the temple such as: - use a quiet voice, do not use anger - respect objects and people around the temple i.e do not point your legs towards either of these - respect the nuns and monks, give them some space basically - bow when entering a place of meditation or worshiping... this was bowing three times.  And when you r greeting people it is a small bow with your hands in prayer position...no high fives or shaking hands with the monks or anything - and one of the hardest being to sit on your knees when in worship areas...it bloody hurt.So you have the rules and the basic structure so you kinda know what i was up to at the center...ohhh and only wear white clothing :).  I found the whole experience a challenge it did get a little easier towards the end but not much.  The meditation techniques we used were walking, sitting and my obvious favorite lying :)Each of the techniques used has the key focus of being mindful...I'm not going to go into it too much because there no point me attempting to pass on 6 days of meditation experience in a blog, if you are interested i would say go to a center and check it out.  For all of you in bristol there is a center on Gloucester road that practices insight meditation and i plan to visit it when i get home.  I will just talk briefly about sitting meditation... and the most basic form...as time went on more and more steps were added to each of the three meditation techniques we were learning..... so i sat on the floor in half lotus position (cross legged with my right foot above my left knee), the aim to concentrate on my in breaths and out breaths...to have my mind fully aware of my body....as i breathed in "rising" as i breathed out "falling"....rising, falling, rising, falling, rising falling....and to continue this process until 15 minutes were up and my timer let me know so.  It is very very difficult to concentrate on your body and your body alone at the present time.... if you hear a noise or as our teacher explained it "if a noise touches you on your ear" you are to recognize that noise and to say in your head "hearing, hearing, hearing" and continue with the rising falling.  Obviously it gets a lot more complicated than this and there is a lot more involved especially as you get further and further into practice but it gives you the idea.I had some bad times meditating, and some good times.  It is basically you and your thoughts, and it can be difficult, especially when you are spending over 6 hours a day meditating.  It can be very rewarding and useful within the real world as i discovered, it also has a very calming effect and i almost feel like the world is rushing around me now... i know that sounds very la de da, but there we go.  I also had some amusing experiences during the meditation, where i would experience a sensation deep in the process that i am not able to explain, but i found myself  laughing and extremely full of energy and happiness after coming out of the meditation.  Talking about laughing to myself in an empty room wearing all white, the meditation center did look like a mental institute, you had 12 people walking around in silence wearing white, going through the range of emotions on their own.  Especially so when you see people in the garden practicing walking meditation which involves walking in slow motion while staring a few feet ahead of yourself at the ground.  There were several areas we could utilize, our rooms, a meditation hall, the dining area, a garden and the temple that is open to the general public.  It was quite funny to walk around the temple all in white while surrounded by lots of tourists...definitely got some funny looks, especially from other Westerners thinking your the local nutter.  The temple area was gorgeous and a real treat to call home for those six days, you had gold strewn everywhere, beautifully designed and decorated buildings, statues and a gorgeous chanting hall containing a giant gold Buddha all topped off with a gold pagoda in the center of the site.  My favorite aspect of the location had to be the view, my favorite place to go and contemplate during my breaks while enjoying a hot chocolate.  I often found myself at the view point at 5:00 in the morning and late at night.... it was good early in the morning, during the day it was too foggy towards the night it got better again...but when it was dark, that was the best.  It took my breath away and seemed to take my breath away every time i looked at it, the lights of the city opened up in a flat area of land... the way i described it too myself at the time: Like someone had taken a giant scalpel and cut a layer from the earths surface revealing the hidden circuit boards and inner workings of the world, the electronic planet.  It really did look like something out of a sci fi movie and thats how i like to remember it.  Another bonus was the Chiang Mai airport....a perfect view of the runway so during the day and night, mainly because we were awake for so much of it! you would see at least 4 or 5 planes land and take off sometimes more.  The garden was also the home of two naughty puppies who zoe fell in love with.The food was great... it was a challenge to not eat after midday but after the first few days i soon adapted and i think the fact that i was drinking a shed load of water and herbal tea place the lack of physical activity definitely made a difference.  Before our lunch time meal we would have to chant together, which was for me a novelty but the meaning of some of the chanting i really liked, it basically said "We eat not for entertainment but to survive and for continuance of this body" and my favorite bit " i eat to destroy the old feelings of hunger and not to create new feelings of overeating"...brilliant.  One of tasks during eating is to eat mindfully also, we would sit in silence, each with our own table facing out into the garden and as we ate to eat mindfully.  Thinking about chewing, the tastes, how my tongue was reacting etc, etc, it was a very interesting experience. During the day we would have Dhamma talk with our teacher, explaining basic principles of Buddhism.  He was a great guy to listen to, very engaging, a great story teller and very comical, it was definitely something to look forward to during the day.  He would also like to stress that we spend all of our time looking after our bodies but we go thousands of days without looking after our minds, and this is partly what the meditation sets out to do.An optional activity was the chanting, the main session being at 6:00pm but you could also partake in the 5:00 am and 9:00pm session.  I went twice and enjoyed both although i felt like Bambi taking its first steps every time i left because after sitting in the required position i could not feel my feet.  You start by bowing to the Buddha and waiting for the abbot to arrive, when he does and he lights the candles, you all turn to face and pay your respects to the golden pagoda.  After this you cant together (the monks mainly from memory us from a book) for about an hour... a very unique experience, there were over 40 monks and only 5 - 8 of us.  As we were chanting you would also get tourists taking pictures through the door.  Anyways you chant up until 7:00 then you change to the lotus position and you all meditate together in perfect silence for the next fifteen minutes, this is then followed by some more chanting and then paying respect to the Buddha and the pagoda once more.  A very interesting and unique experience, one i will never forget, especially meditating alongside monks at one of Thailand's most famous Wat's.We also took part in "Feeding the monks", i know it sounds strange and its not like they keep some of them in a cage and you need to fill up their water bowl and chuck in some fish scraps a couple of times a day.  Basically every morning they walk through the temple with their alms bowls and people fill them with food.  I gave out crackers, zoe gave out cookies and mike gave each monk 2 strawberries!  Very funny morning, we realised afterwards how they would all be pissed at the strawberries crushed up in their alms bowls. ark ark The last activity was reporting, this would be once a day and would involve a one on one talk with your teacher (monk) he would answer Any questions regarding the meditation and would then give you the next step in the technique along with any relevant tips.  He was an exceptional guy and very down to earth for someone who has practiced for over 9 years.I would definitely recommend giving meditation a go, as i said most towns have places where you can learn the techniques.  If i had the time i would have liked to complete the 21 day foundation course, obviously that would be a big chunk out of our time in Thailand, and we decided not to do it, but if i ever find myself with a lot of time on my hands it will always be an option.... even with the final three days supposedly consisting of no sleep and a pretty much consistent schedule of meditation.So there we have it.. i think i explained everything we have been up to since my last blog.  I don't think i missed anything out either...i know i definitely babbled a lot in some parts so if you have made it this far, well done :)  Since the meditation i have been on the net and wandering around Chiang Mai, eating at the night market etc and generally being happy.  I am defiantly feeling a lot healthier in Thailand, i have not smoked a cigarette for over 10 days (not even when drinking) and i don't intend to, i still am and have been exercising in the mornings, I'm eating healthy, and now i meditate 30 minutes when i wake up and 5 minutes before bed.  Pat C would be proud (x-colleague at orange)I almost feel like it is the first time i have been free in Thailand as we were almost straight into a structured life on the farm, then we were in the meditation retreat and now ...well nowww ..ummm, i guess i will decide later what to do now :)  Ohh we have booked up a trip to the elephant sanctuary tomorrow...me and Zoe are going. You don't ride them or anything (due to the cruel training methods), the idea of this place is to look after them, you feed them, you get in the river with them and wash them etc etc, its a little more pricey than the rides but it is there for the elephants not the customer so we are well happy to pay the extra :)If anyone has any questions or would just like to send me an e-mail feel free to do so thomaswguy@gmail.comI recently finished a book called the bible code.  A very interesting read, and speculates or actually almost proves the theory of a code that is hidden in the bible.  The code is said to show all events that will happen in the future, and throughout the book proof of events that have already happened is shown in the code and also events that were in the future during the time of the book being written.  Very interesting.... I'm starting to notice that as this blog has gone on I'm starting to sound a little more like a nutter every minute..Anyways Till Next TimeTom P.s Happy Birthday Holly :) for today 2nd Feb  and answer the phone !p.p.s photos here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/discozo/sets/72157613180505827/p.p.p.s jus been listening to radio 1 while uploading photos...home sick!!!  soon wear off ;P
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Chiang Mai, Thailand

HelloSo the last time i wrote here, which seems like a long time ago for some reason...maybe because I'm tired, i was just about to jump on a bus to Vang Vieng...welll i have been there now and I'm just about to tell you about it. Vang Vieng.. a picturesque town in the north of Laos.  The town is surrounded by gorgeous mountains, clear rivers and a load of pissed up tourists.  On arrival we met back up with Tom Mills who we had said goodbye to in Vietnam, and headed to the bungalow he had booked us into.  What is great about the town, is that even though it is full of pissed up tourists, it doesn't allow them to ruin it.  The drinking is done on the river, all the bars in town close around 10:30 leaving all of the drunkards to party on a small island that stops the music at midnight.  It may sound a bit rubbish for partying but it is exactly the opposite.  The early closing doesn't make a difference because the partying starts at 10:00 am every day and by midnight everyone is ready to knock it on the head anyway. The day time drinking conducted on the river surrounded by gorgeous mountains is complimented by tubing.  You start your day with a scrummy baguette (chunks of tender battered chicken and sauce in a perfect bread roll) from a street vendor at a super cheap price... we were slightly addicted to the sarnies by the time we left.....buuut as i was saying, after some munch you pick up the inner tube of a tractor tyre and grab a Tuk Tuk.  The Tuk Tuk drops you off at the start of the river tubing experience and after floating for around 5 minutes you get pulled into the first bar.  When i say pulled in i mean they trough a weighted rope out to you and drag you in.  The bars are basically wooden decks on the side of the river serving up a plethora of alcoholic and non alcoholic beverages, with a few swings and slides thrown in.  So the rest of your day or until the sun disappears behind the mountain at 4:00pm is spent tubing from bar to bar, chatting, drinking and pissing about on the river. I just want to explain the river activities to you a second.  The main bars have them and i think there were only five bars that receive most tubers during the day mainly because of the extra activities offered.  A couple of them have rope swings... not just small swings that you played on as a kid, these swings are accessed by climbing up a ladder attached to a tree at quite a height, when climbing up to the top there is always a lot of banter (mainly nervous energy) before getting to the front of the Que, but as i noticed over and over again, as you get nearer to your turn on the swing and higher up the ladder everyone goes a bit quiet and grip's onto the side a bit harder.... I'm not gonna lie, i was always a bit nervous... but for some reason it seems to get easier during the day ;).  Anyways the swings are the same ones you see in a circus..ummm trapeze i think its called, basically a bar you hold onto jump off of a platform and your swinging high above the river, the key to not hurting your self to much ...let go at the right time.  We were hanging around with a bunch of lads, me, Mike, Tom Mills, Zoe, couple of Kiwi Lads, and an American guy...so naturally there was a lot of banter and it was decided that if you did not let go of the swing at the highest point you were a wimp.  I did it second attempt and it hurt, but the adrenaline rush from cycling in empty air waiting to hit the water made it worth it :)  I did enjoy watching mike's first attempt at the swing, i was just before him and still in the river sorting myself out after a semi hard landing i heard a groaning noise flying through the sky....Mike, he decided it wouldn't hurt so much if he let go at the lowest point, so instead of hanging onto the trapeze letting himself swing back and forth for a while to slow the momentum, on the first swing he let go at the lowest point effectively hitting the water as hard as you possibly could (similar to just jumping off of the platform but with the added forward motion of the swing).....so there was a groan and a splash and a hurt looking Mike appearing from the water... he says his ribs are still hurting now and at the time said he made contact with the water in the following order.... knees, balls, ribs :)  I laughed so hard and if i could be bothered would draw a diagram to put on here so you can picture the scene better ...but i think i have explained it well enough...maybe.  The other bars had similarly painful activities, such as a bigger swing, zip lines that wrench your back when you reach the end, a slide that catapults you a fair height above the river (my most painful experience when my first contact with the river was my face), and a mud pit.  The mud pit was hilarious, but also where i managed to cut up my knee and feet...on the second day we decided not to go into the mud pit until beastie boys came on the stereo, so a nervous 10 minutes was spent eying each other up until the key song came on and we started wrestling, throwing, ducking and generally assaulting each other in the mud. Vang Vieng also showed me that you can barter for beer in bars.. it started on the river when they were trying to charge me 12,000 kip for a large beer (1 quid), and i told them it should be 10,000 kip, there was no argument made and they said 10,000 would be fine, so i have been doing the same ever since :)  After a days tubing, you have the option of floating all the way down the river back into town or grabbing a tuk tuk to return you....one day we decided to attempt floating all the way down the river but halfway home realised we were freezing and gave up.  Once back in town the festival like atmosphere of the day does not stop and you head onto the island (a small island, overlooked by the bungalow we were staying in).  The island was lots of fun, we tended to stay in the same bar... called smile bar, it had two large fires in the middle of the field, hammocks, benches, free shots of whiskey, and an amazing atmosphere.  Smile bar is where we celebrated NYE with at least 500 people...maybe more, I'm not too good at judging crowd sizes... but more importantly it was where me Zoe, mike , Tom Mills and a load of other peeps we had met on the way celebrated it together.... a very good NYE. Other than the babble i have just typed up about Vang Vieng..... we stayed in a lovely bungalow over looking the river.  We spent a couple of recovery days (we went tubing 3 times) hanging around in the "Friends" or more often the "Family Guy" bars....really comfy bars, where you can lie surrounded in pillows watching the TV, ordering snacks and fruit shakes.  One little Gem offering a taste from home was the Aussie bar, the taste from home being a fry up and HP sauce! I was so happy and probably managed to get through a whole bottle myself in the time we spent in Bang Vieng.  One unfortunate accident involved the butscartcher Zoe had bought me for Christmas, just after the bottom of my feet had recovered from a couple of coconut shell incidents i manged to tread on the butscrather with my full weight, putting a couple of very painful puncture holes in the bottom of my foot, which have just about healed up now :) Feeling a little broken we headed from Vang Vieng to Luang Probang, we said good bye to Tom Mills as he was heading south and on to Bangkok to meet a friend and jumped on a bus.  I was glad to leave Vang Vieng and ready for a long while without beer.  The bus ride was super scary, it was a small mini van and lasted about 6 hours.  The ride involved winding roads with sheer drops off the side, a driver constantly looking at things other than the road including his mobile phone, overtaking around blind corners, and general occurrences that made us hold our breath.  The best thing about the drive though was the beautiful view of the mountains.... and i have recently heard that 85% of Laos is made up of mountains.... most of them being lush and green. Arriving in Luang Probang we decided to treat ourselves to plush accommodation with hot water and a TV.  We bought DVD's, pizza, trays of vegetable treats and enjoyed an evening of movies after hooking our DVD player up to the TV.  Pizza being the biggest treat as no matter where we seem to go it is really really expensive compared to everyhting else... I'm not sure if its the cheese, or the fact that the locals know how much westerners love their pizzas, but whatever it is their expensive.  We spent a couple of days in Luang Probang and i loved it, its a very chilled out town, again surrounded by beautiful scenery.  One of the days we climbed to the top of the hill in the center of town for a good birds eye view of the city, and also checked out the "Buddha's Footprint" which he once left in the city... I'm not too clued up on Buddha but if he is the size of a giant and has a footprint similar to that of a dinosaur then i believe it truly was Buddhas footprint we were looking at. On the night we enjoyed an amazing vegetarian buffet, amazing because it was supper tasty but also because it was super cheap, after the buffet headed into the night market for some of the best bartering i have ever experienced.  They were either pricing their items at a ridiculously high price to start with or i was at my haggling peak, as i was managing to walk away with items at a quarter of the asking price sometimes less.  I was pulling out walk away maneuvers, the "Thats my final price" face and hand signals, key phrases and felt like i was on haggling fire with the results i was achieving.... so I'm going to put it down to my haggling but there is a small chance they had over priced the items in the first place.  We also found the best bookstore in the world, or at least the best one i have ever been to.  I managed to offload a couple of my books and pick up a new one with their book swap, but the shop also offered an amazing reading area filled with pillows, and pure comfort while they offer you cake and drinks from a selection of over 25 teas and coffee....oooo and they also had movie nights.  If were not in a rush to leave town due to our visa nearing its end i would have spent a whole day in that bookshop.  We also spent an afternoon browsing a Chinese market just outside of town, more my type of market full of crap but none of the touristy crap and selling at local prices. We were in a bit of a rush to leave Luang Probang... only for good reasons though, 1. We had managed to book a place on the "Gibbon Trail" and 2. our visa was running out.  The bus heading to HuayXay was one of the worst yet.  We were the only tourists on the bus, which is not a bad thing but it just meant we had difficulty finding out how long we were stopping for etc, the road was super windy and super bumpy which led to about 40-60% of the bus throwing up....loudly, one lady right next to us.  The bus was freezing as it stank of sick so we had to have the windows open, and as all the seats were taken people were sitting in the isle and Zoe ended up with a kid sleeping over her feet.  They also played really loud music the whole way, which was not too much fun on a 16 hour bus ride, especially when it was still going on at 3:00 in the morning, and not just the music from the stereo but also people playing songs on their mobile phones all night long. Sooo it was a really bad bus, but thats travel and i love it :) We arrived in HuayXay, a small town with one main road and not much going on.  Had a few issues getting payment to the "Gibbon Trail" and few nail biting moments where we thought we would not get to go, mainly because paypal blocked Zoe's account, due to suspicious activity ie. the use of it in Laos, but it worked out and we were booked and ready to leave in the morning.   The gibbon trail or "Gibbon Experience" is an Eco tourism forest conservation project. Through the money they get from customers such as us they fund forest protection and community projects in Bokeo Nature Reserve, Northern Laos, plus there are a load of gibbons hanging around the area that if your lucky you get to see.  We jumped in the bus with ten others for the three hour drive to the nature reserve, after a bit of time on the road, and a long bumpy track we were at the edge of the jungle, surrounded by a small village made up of bamboo huts.  We trekked for an hour through some beautiful scenery and ended up at the gibbon experience main base within the reserve.  After a briefing on how to use the harness to whizz through the trees and above the canopy on a zip line we were divided up into three tree houses.  One contained three boys, another contained a couple and our tree house the biggest of the lot contained me, Zoe and 5 other girls.  We trekked a little further and after our first zip (the only way to enter the tree house) we had some time to get accustomed to our new home..... A three tiered tree house 45 meters from the ground, it was a stunning piece of craftsmanship, and truly amazing how they completed a build so high in the tree.  The top level contained a double bed (mine and Zoe's), the second level contained a sink, gas cooker, and chill out area, the bottom level consisted of a shower connected to a spring (bloody freezing but super invigorating) and two triple beds for the other girls to share.After some time to catch our breaths and take in the view of the forest, our guide led us on a 2 hour zip through the jungle.  You basically wear your harness as you would with rock climbing / abseiling gear, first you attach your safety rope to the zip line, then you attach a device made up of rollers to whizz you down the line and a piece of tyre to use as a brake if your anywhere near to crashing into a tree at the other end.  It was one of the many highlights of our trip so far, a little nerve racking at first, especially when you look down and you realise how high you are (some of the lines were stupidly high).  The feeling you get when zipping along past the tops of trees that have taken hundreds of years to grow, is amazing and difficult to explain.  The longest line was 340 meters and the shortest 60 meters.After our introduction to zip lining with the guide we were pretty much left on our own to explore the jungle via tracks and zip lines for the next 3 days...a special experience and one i will always remember.... i think i would like to do it again, maybe in a few years time.  One of the night me and the 6 girls were playing cards and i decided i wanted to do a night zip, we were told this was not allowed, but seeing as we were on our own and no one was around i wanted to experience the thrill of the Zip but at night.  After suggesting it to the girls they decided to make it a little more interesting and the added the idea that the loser of the card game we were playing had to zip in just their underpants... not to bad for me, a little worse for them.  Well anyways one of the girls lost and fair play to her, stripped down to just her pants and night zipped through the trees topless, there was a no photograph rule but everyone seemed to ignore that and got snap happy.  I also had a night zip and it was as good as i expected, the only scary part was getting to the other end of the line and finding yourself in the dead of night in the middle of the jungle...oh and i zipped fully clothed.Gibbons wise, the only people to see gibbons out of all 12 of us was me and Zoe :)  well Zoe definitely seen a gibbon, i seen a black shape whizz up a tree...I'm telling myself it was a gibbon, and I'm pretty sure it was.  Falling asleep in the tree house was a little scary, mainly because on the first day the boys had a massive bright green snake in their tree house.... i saw the pictures and it was huge...randomly their guide hit it over the head with a bamboo pole and threw it out of the tree!  not very Eco- friendly but he said he was scared of it and it was dangerous!  So the night time routine included scouting for snakes and spiders (apparently they get pretty big ones in the tree house) and then tucking the white tarpaulin/mosquito net around our bed.  Woke up a few times on the first night to the sound of scratching and scurrying... we discovered it was rats or mice as they had chewed holes into both mine and Zoe's bags....not sure what they were after in my bag but in Zoe's they ate through a sun cream bottle.  The second night after a long while trying to get to sleep i slept like a log, prob because i had been running around all day like a loony trying to get as many zipps in as possible.  It took me a while to get to sleep because the wind had picked up and when your 45 feet in the air, you can feel your bed rocking and creaking it gets a little nerve racking.  The best part of the whole tree house experience was waking up in the morning, i set my alarm for 5:45am on the third day and woke to a near silent forest, but as the sun came up you could hear all of the birds and animals waking up around you aswell as the jungle came alive.....wildlife wise other than the gibbons there are bears, birds, squirrels, and one afternoon exploring the jungle we heard the weirdest and very scary barking noise, it didn't sound like a dog and it was getting louder... i freaked out a little as it was getting dark also so we just zipped ourselves to the safety of our tree house :)I think i have babbled on long enough about the whole gibbon thing, if you want to know anymore you can e-mail me.... ooohhh one more thing though, the last night a mouse/rat managed to chew its way into our tarpaulin and eat a chunk out of Zoe's book that was led next to her head....cheeky bastardo!  And we also did a tandem zip (once again we were told not to, but it was worth it :P)Back in town we met up with Mike again who we have now been traveling with since the start of Laos (over 1 month).  He had left us to do the gibbon thing on our own and then booked us a guest house in town for our return... this was our last night in Laos and was spent with one of their amazing baguettes a Laos beer and view of Thailand.  The view from the roof of the guest house was gorgeous, in the foreground the sleepy border town of Huay Xai, in the background a small river crossing and Thailand :)  I also had some good news to find out that the Christmas presents i had sent home to my family had arrived....yey!So it was the end of Laos, a beautiful country, that will definitely make it into my top five.... we took the small boat ride across the river and entered Thailand.  A 7 hour bus ride later we found ourselves in the north west of a country that to me feels like the land of opportunity... i will explain.  First i will let you know the town we ended up at is Chiang Mai... which i believe is the second biggest or at least the second most visited city in Thailand and is where i am writing this blog from now.  I called it the land of opportunity because of the amount of courses and activities available to a traveler here.  I may be repeating myself from other blogs but I'm too tired (read lazy) to check back to see if i am... . but i just wanted to write a little bit about the plans i have made for Thailand...or at least some of the activities i may be participating in: - Scuba diving course: Ever since my first dive in Australia i have been looking forward to an opportunity to get qualified, i hear Thailand is the place to do it, price and dive site wise - Cooking course: love Thai food, love to cook, time to learn - Meditation course: I have been told that such a course can be very rewarding, and i think that this will be one of the only opportunities i will have to try it....i mean can you see yourself using up a week of your yearly holiday to sit in silence?  I have booked this already and will be taking a 5-6 day course on the 26th of January...take a read about the Buddhism center here: http://www.fivethousandyears.org/mos/  - ATV and white water rafting day: Love quads, love rafting - Organic farm stay: A fellow traveler passed on the details of this place that can be found in the north of Thailand... basically an organic farm, where you can stay for free or near to nothing if you help out picking cotton or building huts etc..... i fancy a bit of labor and i plan to be there within the next few days for a few days stay you can check it out here: http://www.tacomepai.com/en/- Muay Thai Boxing course: When in Rome...and i should prob learn how to defend myself :P- 1 day trip to Burma: Hap Harrently it is possible to take a 1 day trip from a border town in the south ...no visa necessary :)So from the above you can see why I'm calling it the land of opportunity...and fingers crossed you should be hearing about all of those activities in future blogs :)Bloody hell Jim, its turning out to be a bloody long ol blog... for those of you who have made it this far (not many people left I'm sure) i will just tell you about our first couple of days in Thailand.  They have been spent in Chiang Mai, we have pretty much just been getting ourselves organised AKA planning activities, getting a bit of a schedule together as you have to book in advance for most.  We did spend some time in the night market... which had some amazing snacks (pork sausages padded out with rice, fried quails eggs, spring rolls, dumplings), plus we have had some time to sample some of Thailand's tastiest dishes, yum.  The main point of interest on our Thailand adventure so far was a night of Muay Thai Boxing (kick boxing).  We picked up some cheap tickets at our hostel and at 8:15 headed to the arena early (Thaphae boxing arena - next to the eastern gate of the inner city walls).  The atmosphere was amazing, it almost felt like i was in a Guy Ritchie film.  We had a ringside table...literally ring side, during the fights i sometimes lent on the ring to get some good photos we were that close.  It was a bit grubby, the room stank of vaporub and sweat, everything seemed a bit rough and dirty and it all added to the atmosphere.  We watched 9 matches, complimented by whiskey and coke served to the table, along with some bar snacks.  The first couple of fights were a little disturbing as the fighters couldn't have been older than 12 or thirteen, and they didn't hold back.... it was properly brutal fighting.  There were a couple of lady fights and then the rest were blokes.  We saw 2 knockouts, both with brutal power and speed, one left the poor guy stumbling around the ring when he tried to stand up.  In fact it was a very surreal experience for me, i don't think i have ever been to a fight before, and fighting is definitely not in my nature so seeing two guys (or girls) putting their full energy into fighting each other so close to me was strange.... i definitely enjoyed the night,  especially getting involved with the cheers and the crowd,  but i think that was an interest in the techniques and skill displayed as opposed to watching someone get the crap beaten out of them.  The boxing was topped off with some cabaret, by cabaret i mean lady boys miming to Celine Dion..... we left.So that s been Thailand so far, and the almost the end of this blog....we are off to Pai tomorrow, a very chilled out town further north.Books read: Janet Evanovich - Three to get deadly.... didn't like it... did not think it was written very well, obviously better than anything i could do buuut there was a lot of he said, she said then he said, then she said.... boring.Ben Mezrich - Ugly American$...Very very very good read, a true story about Americans (along with Brits) trading in Japan, involves the Yakuza, and exposes a little of the Japanese underworld...very seedy, very gritty, and a very good read.Annnnd as always check out the rest of our photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/discozo/sets/  if you got the time there are bloody loads of em!Annnnd one more little comment, Zoe's blog has been featured on travelpod for the last couple of weeks...it has just moved down to the second spot, but if you want to take a gander you can find it on the home page of travelpod... or go here: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/you_know_zo/2/1213380000/tpod.htmlTill next time Tom
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1228722480/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1228722480/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/thomaswguy/1/1228722480/tpod.html Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:20:48 -0500 Where is tom dot com

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Stung Treng, Cambodia

Hooo kSo we made a second trip back to bamboo island..our own personal paradise, or so it felt with the lack of people there.  This time we were a gang, a gang of 6 in fact...me, zo, tony, b, em, and kate.  We rented two bungalows this time on the other side of the island... a little more basic aka no toilet just two double beds... but still on the seas edge and this time on the less windy super beautiful beach of the island.  The plan was two nights and 3 days of relaxation.... but it ended up being a three night trip as we "accidentally" missed the only boat home and were "forced" to spend another day and night.  We worked out that in the end for the three nights it cost us all $10 each, less than the price of a cinema ticket at home ....loverly. This side of the island had a couple of Westerners running the accommodation and bar.... they had only been there two weeks and their lack of organization worked to our advantage.. aka them telling us that after a dispute with the management meant that they were not going to let them make any profit... which worked out as free gin and tonic, Baileys, rum, and dirt cheap food :)   The night of burning the managements profit was only ruined by the random appearance of two army men on an island only accessible by boat.  Out of the dark and from where, no one knows the two guys turned up and started to demand free drinks and cigarettes from the bar.... this spooked the couple running the place and resulted in them asking us to leave so they could shut up the bar.... random, but an experience nonetheless. The rest of our bamboo island experience included lots of sea time (super warm and calm sea), ticker (the hackey sack / shuttlecock game), cards, eating, drinking, another fishing trip (i won), frisbee, and general pissing about with the group.  A good time spent on a super amazing island.  Oh i did have a bit of fun with a crab.... sitting on the beach in the morning after a yoga session for the group led by Zoe, i noticed a large crab and a little crab popping out of their holes in the sand.  I chucked some scraps of pringles at them and they took it back down their hole....challenging the big crab i gave him a whole pringle, first he chopped it up into smaller bits with his claws, then  after a failed attempt at retreating to his hole with the snack, i watched as from the whole he was throwing lumps of sand out to make room for the pringle...amazing crab , his name was Barry :) Back on the mainland we had a loverly last supper with the gang and a drunken goodbye.  They all headed off to Thailand in the morning we headed on a 10 hour bus trip to Siem Reap.....and a lovely nus ride it was too....  not as dangerous as some of the other countries we have been to with some sensible overtaking and a sensible speed...god i love Cambodia.  On arrival to Siem Reap as they sometimes do they dropped us off at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere...leaving the bus into the dark as always we were pitched at by a load of Tuk Tuk drivers.... after a few seconds deliberation we picked one... he was loverly! First he took us to a couple of different guest houses to see which one we liked the best.  We picked one and agreed to let him pick us up in two days at 4:30 am to see the temples of Angkor.  We were looking forward to getting back to our hardcore sightseeing days, but first we spent a day of rest and recuperation in bed....watching shit TV :) Nice and Early at 4:30 our tuk tuk driver Lichee was awaiting, and we jumped aboard....... tuk tuks have to be the best form of transport, their airy and allow you to get a good 360 view of the area :)  He took us into the dark on a 30 minute journey to Angkor Wat.... the main temple, here we watched a stunning sunrise reveal the beautiful temple complex around us...we wandered and ate :)  You can read more about Angkor Wat here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_Watand if your hardcore you can enjoy a read about the whole Angkor temple district here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor After enjoying the first temple we jumped back in the tuk tuk and spent a good 9  hours driving from temple to temple dodging elephants on the way.  At the second temple complex we were wandering through some woods when a super cheeky salesman jumped out from behind a tree.... he was selling rubbing's he had made of ancient stone carvings throughout the temples...we bought two :)  My favorite had to be the temples that had huge trees growing on top of them with chunky roots snaking through the rocks.... i think this is where some of tomb raider was filmed.  We bought drinks and pastry's for Lichee throughout the day and gave him a good tip at the end....he was a legend.  Saying that most Cambodians are and this country is going to make my top three list somewhat due to the people...everyone here has a smile, there good to have a laugh with ...especially the kids....they are all really nice  :) Before leaving Siem Reap we treated ourselves to a pucker restaurant called the dead fish... a super funky restaurant, all of the tables are on different levels, with about 8 different platforms throughout the whole restaurant... we chose a table with pillows so you can sit on the floor while you eat.  For the higher levels they have a pulley system to get the drinks up to the waiters and throughout your meal they have traditional Cambodian apsara dancers...loverly!  Other than that the restaurant had ducks wandering around (for insect control), a gator pit with 20 gaters (for crime control?!?!) and all the clocks were set wrong (to remind you of the past!?!)Siem Reap done with we enjoyed an 8 hour bus ride and i take back everything i said about safe Cambodian buses...we had two bus rides one to Kompong Cham and the other to Kratie our final destination..... stupid speeds, stupid over taking and a very scary ride (not sure if I'm more scared due to our Bolivian bus crash....but I'm sure that has something to do with it.)  We hit kratie found a luxury hotel at $2.50 each and grabbed a curry..... oh we also realized that you can not get visas at the Laos border... so we handed a bloke our passports who sent them on a bus back to Phnom Penh, and told us they would return in 2 days on the same bus we will be taking to Ban Lung,.... fingers crossed :)First full day in Kratie back in our super sightseeing mind frame we booked a trip to see the Irrawaddy dolphins... super extinct freshwater dolphins, with only 40 in the Mekong river and 8 in the area we visited.  We met our drivers at 8:00am four of us had booked and 4 mopeds were waiting.  Zoe had requested us helmets, but the other girl with us did not think to do so.... being either really kind or really stupid i let her have mine.  We cruised on the back of our drivers mopeds for 30 minutes to the section of the Mekong the dolphins hang out at.... i was wearing my very handy Cambodian scarf like a cowboy ...keeping the dust away from my mouth and nose.  We jumped from moto to boat and spent just over an our watching these amazing animals pop out fro the surface.... i loved it and could have spent the whole day watching them.Afternoon of downtime in Kratie then up the next morning to grab our passports and jump on a bus heading for Ban Lung.  Yey the passports arrived...another visa stuck in and ready to go.We wandered around the mars like super dusty town of Ban Lung and picked up some super cheap eats.... Luk Lak ( a Cambodian dish of beef with vegetables, covered in gravy remarkably like home yum!)  The next morning we decided to rent motorbikes (we are definitely for doing things on your own rather than taking a tour...more freedom, and you don't feel like your being herded like sheep!).  This motorbike trip was a bit more challenging than the ones we had taken before, mainly because there were not any  proper roads, all dusty dirt tracks that at  points were only just as wide as the tire of the bike... a little hairy but a definite sense of achievement received after navigating our way around Ban Lungs surrounding areas.  On this trip we stopped at three waterfalls... the first one we just looked at, gorgeous to look at but we were not quite ready for a swim, by the second waterfall we were covered in red dust and ready for a swim.... it was icy cold but just what we needed, with a refreshing pool to swim around just at the base of the fall.  The third waterfall didn't involve swimming but it did involve standing underneath the waterfall itself.... very exhilarating with the icy spikes of the water hitting our shoulders from a height.  Dodging dogs and cows along the way we made it to our last stop a volcanic crater lake..... yup used to be a volcanic crater...well still is a volcanic crater but now filled with surprisingly warm crystal clear water... a good afternoon spent here relaxing :)The next day presented a challenge... money.  It all started with the accidental loss of Zoe's wallet...... it happened on Bamboo Island... we were wading through the sea at night, enjoying the sparkly effect of the phosphorus, a plankton that glows up as you splash around.  Zoe announced that she had dropped her wallet!  After a search of the sea with torches and a mornings snorkeling the next day we decided it had been lost.... so we were left with my one cash card.  We took out a lot of cash in Siem Reap as we knew there may be issues getting money in the more remote areas of northern Cambodia... what we didn't count on was the price of the visa we had to buy in Kratie.... we headed to Ban Lung.  Yey Ban lung had a cash point..Noooooo.. Visa only.  The only visa card we had was in Zo's wallet.  So now aware that the next cash point we encounter willing to accept my standard cash card could be in a couple of weeks we had a dilemma.  Just a side note... its amazing how you take services such a s cash points for granted...out here they can be few and far between so planning ahead is always necessary.  Anyways.... we Text our night in shining armour Mr James Aspinwall, James jumped on the net and visited www.westernunion.co.uk, he dropped some cash into an account for us to be picked up in Cambodia and within 1 hour of us texting him the cash was available and waiting at the Ban Lung branch of  western union... Thanks again James.  Popping into the  office i was presented with a note by the cashier ...a note that had been left by James..... "To receive the transfered funds Thomas William guy must kiss the cashier on the cheek, if there is a glass barrier he must blow her a kiss".  Luckily there was a glass barrier (worried about crossing some boundaries) so i blew the cashier a kiss and after some laughter from the branch staff we received our cash and we had been saved WHOOP!Our last day in Ban Lung was spent at the lake...this time deciding that some exercise was needed we rented push bikes and enjoyed a full day basking in the sun, and swimming....a good way to say good bye to Cambodia. The journey from Cambodia to Laos was an interesting one.  We headed out from Ban Lung on a 4 hour drive in a mini bus.  Through the thick red dust on a pot holed, very bumpy road, we enjoyed the company of 6 Cambodians who in turn were very much enjoying the company of the on board entertainment.... 3 Cambodian karaoke songs on video on repeat.  We arrived in stung treng and waited a couple of hours for our next bus, watching other travelers jump in different mini buses heading for different locations in Cambodia.....then ours turned up.  A truck with benches on the back... it was a little surprising as we had been promised a mini bus, but turned out to be very enjoyable.  Nothing better than crossing a border with the wind in your hair :)  We met up with Mike, Zoe and Alice who were to accompany us on the truck and headed for the border.  After crossing into Laos we were sad to see Cambodia disappear but very happy to enjoy what a new our new destination had to offer.  The first thing it offered us was a beer.. beer Lao to be exact.   We enjoyed this while waiting for our next bus to take us to our final destination Don Det one of the 4000 islands in southern Laos.  We were told 15 minutes but they didn't arrive for 1 1/2 hours, but no problems we were back on the road this time dodging water buffalo until we reached the edge of the Mekong river (12th largest river in the world) home of the 4000 islands.  We arrived at Don Det after a short boat ride with very beautiful views of the sun setting over the Mekong.  Don det has two sides to the island on which you can stay.... either sunrise side or sunset...we choose to find accommodation on sunset as we figured we were more likely to be up when the sun is setting than when it is rising...we were right and enjoyed many a sunset from our bungalow.So overall i have really really enjoyed Cambodia, its up there with my top three countries visited i would say....but i will make my final decision on that list when we return home in just under 6 months ( we are over half way!!!)  The people are super friendly and we could tell the difference from Vietnam within an hour of entering the country... it was almost as if we could just let our shoulders drop and relax after constant hassle from the locals in Vietnam.  It has been a great place to relax, but at the same time to enjoy some of the countries history, even though some of the historical sites we have visited has ended up being an emotional roller coaster.  The food has been excellent especially Amok (a coconut curry, not dissimilar to korma) and the countryside beautiful.Had a bit of a slowdown on book reading for a little while mainly because of the book i was reading.  If i start a book i have to finish it regardless of how much i am enjoying the read.  The book in question was Indecent Exposure by Tom Sharpe.  Basically i was being lazy, i struggled with the first few pages and ended up re reading them a few times but once i got past that it turned out to be a good read, very enjoyable.  I wont tell you what it was about, maybe you can figure something out from the cover of the book.I also read another Ben Elton... god hes amazing :)  This time a book called High Society, I'm gonna recommend it as i do with all of the Ben Elton's i have read, very informative and a definite page turner.Annnnnd once again as there are too many photos for me to stick on here i have uploaded the rest to the following site http://www.flickr.com/photos/discozo/sets/ ... if you want to take a gander you can :)  (there are around 400 pics of Cambodia)Love to all Tom x x xp.s A very merry christmas to all.... enjoy your xmas grub :)
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Vientiane, Lao Peoples Dem Rep

Ello Ello,So Christmas has gone... and i spent mine in Laos, i admit i did feel a little homesick, missing family and friends, especially my mums roast dinner, i started to feel really homesick when talking to my family on the phone.  I'm OK now though and i will tell you about our motorbiking trip in Pakse. The biker gang was me Zoe and Mike who we had met crossing the border from Cambodia into Laos and have stuck with ever since.The morning started with a quick shop a round for 100cc motorbikes, we soon discovered the cheapest place and dug into an omelet for breakfast ( i think thats what true bikers eat :P ).  We left our big rucksacks at the bike rental place and just packed a few things in our little backpacks for the four day trip. After checking the bikes for faults ...what faults my bike retarded eye can detect i do not know, but i did not spot any.  Anyways, after checking for faults but before mounting our bikes we had to give ourselves biker names.  I chose Pixie dust for Zoe, Zoe chose Green Wing for Mike (because he looks and acts a little like the blond bloke from green wing), and we all chose Falcon Speed for myself.  We called our biker gang the lone wolfs (this involved revving our bikes and howling every morning ....cool ayy)  Oh and we also named our bikes, i called mine "Talon", Pixie Dust rode on "Stardust" and Green Wing rode on "Gold Wing".We hit the road with a four day plan:Pakse -> Tad Lo  Sleep,Tad Lo -> Seekong   Sleep,Seekong -> Paksong Sleep,Packsong -> Pakse From Pakse to Tad Lo the roads were pretty much empty and straight the whole way.  After finding the correct left turn 8Km into the trip we cruised with the wind in our hair, my speedo did not work so i don't know how fast i was going but it felt fast  9Zoe reported us going at 85 km/h on a one off).  I sang to myself most of the way, mainly biker tunes like "born to be wild" and ummm "George Michael - Wake me up before you go go".  We stopped en route for a quick waterfall viewing but we were itching to jump back on the bikes, so that we did and cruised on. We cruised through remote villages, up and down steep hills, one hairy section involved overtaking a large truck on a narrow road, darting out with well needed timing and hammering in front.  We stopped for lunch at a very small collection of huts on the side of the road.  We managed to get the message across that we were hardcore bikers and needed lots of meat or something and we managed to get a bowl of instant noodles each with some rice.... good enough for us and we dug in.  Chatting to the local kids and munching on our noodles we noticed a local van stutter and roll to a stop in the road, me and Green Wing offered and completed a push so the driver could bump start the truck and we walked away feeling happy with our good deed for the day. After settling up for the noodles we hit the road again.  Heading up a fairly steep road until we passed the peak the view that hit us was breathtaking, i had to force myself to concentrate on the road as the view all around me was enough to distract anyone.   We descended into a view of lush green mountains embedded in a stunning valley, topped off by fairy tale white puffy clouds in a blue sky.  Exhilarated by the view i just managed to miss a set of very large pot holes and we continued to Tad Lo. Rolling into Tad Lo i felt the muts nuts passing a bus load of tourists, thinking "hah! you cant handle the road like us hardcore bikers" and then as i pulled into the small village my bubble burst stopping next to some real bikers on some real hardcore bikes.  I guess you need to start small though, and if i get a chance for another motorbike excursion during this trip i might progress on to something bigger.Tad Lo was a very small village and we found a bamboo hut we could rent with two beds, costing us each just 60p a night :)  The village was over run by animals and it was nice to eat dinner with chickens, cows and pigs running around. We woke the next day to the sound of the local animals, first you notice the noisy ones...the cockerel, the mad cow and then stepping out of the bungalow you spot the chunky neighborhood pigs, the pregnant dog and a cluster of chicks following their mum.  We were heading from Tad Lo to Seekong, but started off with a little backtrack to a waterfall we had passed.  Being the hardcore bikers that we though or were pretending to be, we decided that true bikers only wash in streams and a normal shower was not hardcore enough, so that we did and i washed my upper body in the stream running off from the waterfall.....what an excellent way to start the day. We hit the road....first some tarmac and then turning right onto a dirt track, this is where it got a little more interesting as the road was a dusty track full of holes and full concentration was needed.  I almost felt like our previous motorbike days on our around the world trip had been training for the 4 day trip we were on.  We had getting used to bikes time on the island off ha long bay with minimum traffic, then we had getting used to navigating roads and heavy traffic...even a bit of night time driving in Hue, Vietnam.....and then our biking day in Ban lung prepared us for bumpy roads, and navigating dirt tracks.  Anyways we were on a very bumpy, pot holed dirt track and i was loving it.... after some speedy dirt tracking i turned the corner to see Green Wing covered in dust and his bike on the floor.  He had been over taking a local when their bikes had interlocked and it ended up with Green Wing falling off.... he got a way with some minor cuts and bruises so all was good (he did give himself a hard time over it though).  Jumping onto some more tarmac and filling up our petrol at a station we bumped into the guy who had collided with Green Wing.... luckily putting green Wings mind a at ruest as the reason for the accident became apparent, the guy had been drinking, he was very friendly and touch feely, kept on saying sorry and stank of Whisky!  Naughty! We carried on and looked for a waterfall...unsuccessful but ended up riding around a very remote village and getting stared at a lot.  As your riding round the kids come out to say hello, the most enjoyable is riding past a school when they all run up to the fence waving and shouting hello....we even had times where you ride down a line of kids on the side of the road giving them all a high five. We arrived at Seekong and whizzed around looking for accommodation, we didn't find much so we decided to splash out on a semi spanky place with a gorgeous view of the river.  The night was spent playing indoor ticker (the hackey sack with a feather game)  and watching really really bad karaoke....then more ticker with our crash helmets on allowing for an extra dimension to the game.  (I'm gonna chuck on a couple of photos from don det some one sent me of us playing ticker so you can see what I'm on about... oh and a picture of what ticker does to your foot) Day three began with our 7:00 start routine we had got used to.  Had some coffee at a place with the grumpiest people in Laos i had met so far (maybe it was because we had gotten so close to Vietnam :P )  And i realized that i didn't really like Seekong...the surrounding area and the views gorgeous, but Seekong its self i didn't like it... Basically lots of building spread out along side the main road, not really any character and the people were not too friendly. We went looking for another waterfall down a track demonstrating some of the toughest terrain i had met so far in my biking life (around 5 days so far).  But it was definitely a reward to get to our location... no waterfall but a gorgeous clear river, shadowed by a view of the mountains... perfect for biker washing, so we all had an early morning dip watching out for the dreaded puffer fish that is supposed to swim the areas.  The puffer fish (should be called the pervert fish) is not a problem for women ... or i guess unfortunate men, but it was a worry for me as the are rumored to attack penises... luckily i left the river in tact and we got back on the road.  This was an amazing morning, the mountains surrounding us were beautiful, we were climbing a gradual slope, so with every turn in the road we were presented with a better and better view of our surroundings.  The road was also in good shape so we managed to get an early morning buzz of speed while taking in the views.   We turned right towards Paksong and back onto the tough terrain, up a super steep hill,  but one that made you feel good about yourself for not being motivated enough to get a push bike, happy in the though that the only exercise necessary was a turn of the wrist.  After some searching we found a beautiful waterfall, jumping off of the bikes and taking 20 minutes or so just to soak in the view and listen to the roar of this impressive piece of nature.... it was in the distance but the roar was still impressive and it took some proper self control, to get up and leave without getting stuck watching the falls.  Heading on we were over taken by a french couple sharing a moped... 5 minutes later they were led in the road where an oncoming car had knocked them off..... we offered them some hand wash to clean up their cuts, checked they were OK (which they were) and pushed on.  The next section of road i whizzed ahead and enjoyed the tranquility of just me the views and this long and winding dirt track (reminded me of the Death road in Bolivia).  We stopped for lunch and some extra fuel in a very small village, surrounding the houses were sheets covered in coffee beans roasting in the sun... Laos coffee is very underrated, i had never heard of it before i came here but in my opinion it is the best coffee i have ever tasted, we bought a 1 KG bag for $2.50 Getting closer to Paksong we noticed a sign for a coffee plantation, always up for a detour we decided we had enough time to visit the plantation and get to Paksong before it got dark.  Heading up to the gates we were waved through by the security guard and as we rode on we were hit by the amazing and dizzying smell of coffee.  As far as the eye could see were coffee bushes, on the side of the track piles of coffee beans, and hard at work the keepers of the plantation shoveling manure and collecting coffee.  It was a little strange as we did not have to pay to get in, no one spoke English so we just whizzed around the plantation, dodging manure lorries and workers taking in the sights and smells of coffee production.  Defiantly and enjoyable experience and Green Wing even felt the need to hug a coffee bush (guess thats what the routine of a morning coffee or two does to you)Now not far from Paksong we were presented with our last challenge for the day, a tarmac road riddled with deep and plentiful pot holes.... i got a little stupid here but always felt in control.  Whizzing along on the bike, it felt like with a slight lean here or there i could control the bike with precision accuracy, so i started off slow weaving in and around pot holes, but as i continued i started to throttle up a little more, i kept doing this until i was riding at a descent speed but constantly dodging around pot holes, sometimes hitting the brake and narrowly avoiding each one.  I managed to get to the end of the road having dodged every pot hole, knowing that i should have gone a little slower than i did but the adrenaline rush was amazing...and i think i realized a little more why my dad and other bikers around the world enjoy motorbikes so much.We made it to paksong and ended up staying at another fancy hotel (fancy meaning $5 a night each) at the lack of a better alternative.  Completely knackered we ate and fell straight asleep... its funny how riding a bike can take it out of you.... i think it is because of the concentration needed when riding such as dodging pot holes, kids, water buffalo, traffic, goats, dogs, pigs, chickens...all of which i had to dodge on this trip.The last day of our trip and just as keen as all of the other days i was happy to jump on the bike.  First we woke up to some beautiful views of the Laos countryside and enjoyed a game of cards over breakfast.  As seemed to be the case every morning of the trip so far we found ourselves riding into a gorgeous view for the morning, with mountains and clear blue skies all around.  Me and Green Wing decided to get our tires topped up when chucking in a litre of petrol and off we headed.  Not far into the ride Zoe felt the back tire of her bike sliding out from the back and luckily or more accurately ...skillfully Zoe noticed it early on and as we stopped we spotted she had a flat tire.  The sun was beating down on us, we had already made 10Km headway out of Paksong and Zo was stuck with a flat tyre (it happened to be about 20 M from the entrance to the first waterfall we were set to view).  Me and mike scouted the area for garages or wooden shacks that could fix a flat tire and i stumbled upon a couple of guys who seemed equipped to repair the tyre.  The problem was getting the bike to the shop...i decided Zo shouldn't ride it as i can remember my dad telling me how much it damage a tyre to drive without air so we decided to walk it in shifts..... it was a long down hill and a not so long but still a descent distance up hill... I let Zo walk most of the downhill and then i took my shift... i switched on the bike popped it into second and i jogged the bike up the hill....almost letting it pull me up until Green Wing took over and we rolled the bike up to our knights in Shining Armour.  They repaired the tyre, doing the mechanic thing of "oooo need new brake pads aswell"  We were umming and arring but decided that for a total repair price of $6 for the tyre and the brake pads, we had better not risk it and Zoe got them both fixed... Damn i keep saying Zoe i mean.. Pixie Dust got them fixed.Having repaired the bike we back-tracked a little to the first waterfall of the day... walking into the area surrounding the falls i expected to see frodo as the area looked remarkably like the shire in the lord of the rings.  We took a little trek and this time we were able to get to the base of the falls feeling the spray hit us as the water pounded off of the rocks.... another great way to start the day.  The second waterfall was not so high but super fun...some clever no doubtedly smiley happy Laos dude had rigged up a raft in the pool below the falls.... the raft was attacked to some rope that run underneath the water.  The idea being that you all jump onto this wooden raft and pull yourself along until your underneath the falls and eventually behind them.  We decided that this was defiantly a group activity and the three of us piled onto the raft, getting closer, feeling the cool spray of the falls almost got us changing our mind but as soon as we felt the sting of the water i knew we had done the right thing.... it was super refreshing and very exhilarating.  Back on land Zoe pointed out that we didn't have any pictures so me and Green Wing repeated the whole experience and picked up some good photos.The third waterfall took a little riding on some rough terrain, my ass now happy to stay on tarmac after the four days, but it was defiantly worth it.  We stopped for a coffee first and then walked to the waterfall.  It was very inspirational... slightly hidden but i think that added to the view, we trekked a little through some jungle hoping for a better look, the view improved slightly but i full view of the falls was unobtainable, which i felt added to the mystery and inspirational values of the falls.  Feeling fully inspired we decided to get back to Pakse and munch on a curry before our night bus.It was a nice ride back to pakse and when getting int the city i had a definite buzz of accomplishment, and an adrenaline rush of being able to navigate the semi busy city successfully.  Over taking locals, navigating the roads and roundabouts defiantly rounded of the trip nicely and we tucked into a curry before the bus.  So overall it was a very good trip, it has shown me how much enjoyment you can get from riding a bike (that i could not see before) And i felt a little bit like Ewan McGregor on the TV series "the long way down" except without the davidoff aftershave....as you will know if you have seen the adverts "Ewan never rides without his davidoff".......sell out.Waiting for the night bus felt like a rude boy car meet in a car park in england, there was music pumping and the buses had lights flashing all over them, they were beeping their horns...our bus was painted in an excellent mural and the bus next to us had green lighting illuminating the road beneath the bus.  Me and Zoe were super excited to discover that we had a double bed...i could even stretch out as much as i wanted and we hugged up and slept as the bus headed north to the capital city of Vientiane.We arrived at 6:00 am on Christmas morning, and as has become a bit of a routine i opted to stay with the bags while Pixie Dust and Green wing... oh hang about were not on bikes anymore... i mean Zoe and Mike... oh plus Shauna ( a girl we had met on Don Det and happened to be taking the same bus as us) looked for a guest house.  They found one playing Christmas tunes and we dropped off our bags.  We went in search of an English fry up as i wanted to keep the tradition of Christmas alive (my mum always makes a cracking fry up on crimbo morning)... mission successful we tucked into fried tomatoes, bacon, sausage and eggs.  Picking up some Christmas hats we set off to the market to buy each other presents.  We gave ourselves 20 minutes and agreed to meet with the presents... we had a shop and returned to the hostel to wrap.  The pressies were wrapped in a newspaper that i had found ... but it was still nice to give and receive on Christmas day and have something to open.  I bought Zoe a decorative and engraved knife...as i knew she had been looking for one to carve up fruit etc.  i bought mike an electric shaver as he had mentioned that his had broken in Vietnam...and sporting a ginger beard i thought i might put him out of his misery :p  I received a plastic ball that is played over here similar to ticker...a butt scratcher, a DVD and a rasta doll that danced and sang :)  Our next mission for the day was t5o find something that resembled a Christmas dinner...  we found an English pub called the fox and the hound or something and felt very hopeful when we walked in spotting crackers and roast potatoes on the tables... on inquiry we discovered they were fully booked and they couldn't even spare a turkey Sarine the bastardos...so we settled for a burger and a pitcher of Beer Lao instead.  I rang home, very excited to speak to my family but also feeling a little homesick (the most home sick i have felt on the trip so far)... but there are plenty more Christmases to come and i plan on sharing the next one with my family :)It ended up being a slightly drunken night and i hugged an Asian Santa :)  Boxing day was pure relaxation, we spent a lot of time watching Family guy and our Christmas movies on a portable DVD player me and Zoe bought with some Christmas money :)  Very good investment, it means that every now and then we can spend the day in bed watching movies and taking advantage of the super cheap DVDs over here.The day after boxing day was a very interesting one...as informed by lonely planet there is a temple on the edge of town that offers a free meditation session with local monks on a Saturday evening.  We headed over to the temple early and treated ourselves to a sauna and a massage prior to the meditation.  The massage was an experience, it seemed to involve the use of pressure points more than anything and the masseuse was very rough... he popped all of my fingers, cracked my back, crushed me into a ball...but afterwords i could feel a difference and  i was fully relaxed.   We headed from here to the meditation session, it involved 30 minutes cross legged, with your eyes closed concentrating on your breathing ...we were told that of any other thoughts other than your breathing came into your head to take a note of it and to remain focused on the breathing aspect.  i found this tough but noted how effective this form of meditation could be to clear your mind...we then had 30 minutes of walking meditation where all you concentrate on is the action of your feet... you are told to be aware that your foot is rising, coming forward and resting on the ground and only this... so we walked in silence for half an hour and then enjoyed a further half an hour concentrating on our breathing.  The session was ended with questions for the guy leading the meditation.. i found it very informative and a good taster for something i plan to do in Thailand.  Everything according i plan to do a 10 day meditation retreat in northern Thailand... this involves, the boys and girls being separated, the only person you can talk to being your monk, all personal possessions being taken away from you for the duration of the course, and 12 hours a day meditation.  I have talked to a couple of people who have completed this course already... they say the first three days are very difficult to get through as it is just you and your thoughts for 12 hours a day... they also say that they went through all of their emotions and found their selves crying, laughing, angry.  But most importantly they say that after the first three days your head becomes clear and it is a very rewarding experience.  So always up for trying something new and realising that i would never ever have a chance to spend 10 days with just me, myself and my thoughts ... this is an experience i am very much looking forward to in Thailand.A little off topic there and a bit of rant...sorry.  OK sooo we relaxed and meditated, yesterday we wandered the city a little, ate another curry and watched some more movies.  Today i am writing up this blog, sorting out my photos and we have a bus booked for Vang Vieng in 2 1/2 hours.  So thats where were heading next and will be spending NYE.  It is me, Zoe, Mike and Shauna and we will be meeting Tom Mills sometime this afternoon, who i believe is currently traveling with an Australian posse. n Vang Vieng is famous for its tubing...a day typically involves a 9:00 start... grabbing an inner tube of a tractor tyre, getting a Tuk Tuk up river and jumping in.  You float down river every now and then getting pulled in by a bar, having a pint, messing around on zip wires and slides and floating some more along the river to the next bar.  They also have video bars constantly playing family guy and friends on big TV's.  Sooooo thats what were set to look forward to over the next few days.  Hope everyone had a good Christmas and lots of love to all.... Feel free to write me an e-mail at thomaswguy@gmail.com and let me know what you are up to at home or wherever you are.If you want to check out the photos in descent quality go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/discozo/sets/PeazzzeTom x x
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