Pain

As the blog takes a kind of seasonal sabaticle, I have wandered to myself (whilst lying on the beach) what I might write in each new post. I guess this could have been just asking for fate to intervene with some interesting stuff for you to have a read of!

I travelled the 20 metre journey down to the beach with my feet still raw from the football the day before. I hadn't done enough however. The group of us decided to take kayaks around to the next beach along. It was a pretty warm day, the water was especially clear which made for some cool viewing.

After arriving back on our beach (pictured above), I dried off for a while before venturing out with my snorkel and mask. I'm just starting to get to grips with the whole thing, and even spotted a stingray, some crabs and a fish - yes, one fish. Rubbish! The little fella was darting in and out behind some coral as I tried my best to catch a half decent picture. After that adventure, it was time to get in some Frisbee. Anyone that thinks I may be wasting time with this whole travel thing, will eat their words when they find out how good my forehand frisbee throwing has progressed in the last week!

New Years eve was creeping up and we'd still not really seen any of Koh Pha-Ngan. So on the eve itself, a few of us decided to rent motorbikes to help us go check out the islands waterfalls, and also Haad Rin (The location of the islands Full Moon & New Years Parties). After fueling the hogs, we set off on some of the most dubious roads I've ever ridden on - let alone driven. It was not far that we met our first steep incline. The road had lots of washed sand across it as well as large cracks in what once may have been tarmac. I had to slip the bike down through the gears as two of us were on it. As I hit first, the gearbox must've caught hard as I felt the back wheel travel under me and the horizon disappeared and was quickly replaced with a set of motorcycle handlebars. My mate fell off the back and in doing so let the front fall toward the ground again - though the bike had spun 180 degrees. I held on like an Ewok (hmm, those who know me well will know this isn't the first time!) and battled the bike away from the road and toward some shrubbery. I slipped and gave some unneeded gas which sent me off the back being dragged by the kneecaps.

Whoops.

With claret running down my shins I pulled the bike back up and zipped back to the bungalow for my medical supplies.

Strapped up, we headed toward the waterfalls. By the time of arrival, my joints were pretty well seizing up so I didn't have much of an appetite to clamber over the falls. We carried on in to the afternoon and made it to Haad Rin. I had the Schitzel and recommend it! (As far as the beach goes, there were a couple of thousand bodies on it - we were happy to turn back and spend new years in our chilled little village and on a beach where we wouldn't be fighting youngens for space!

New Years Eve was happening. A group of 10(ish) got together and after dinner, we headed on our secluded beachside village bar crawl. As midnight struck, fireworks were let off all around the bay throwing awesome reflections across the calm low tide.
Maybe after the days earlier trauma I was in mood for some food - somehow I managed to eat a Bombay bagguette, several cookies and 3 banana and chocolate pancakes. Well fed, I boogied the new year in, in style (legs not moving on the dance floor style). HAPPY NEW YEAR! (200 litres???)

New Years day I awoke in slightly more pain than I fell asleep with. So I thought it wise to go to the hospital to get me left knee checked out properly. I took great delight getting carted around in a wheel chair for a while. I got an X-Ray and awaited the doctors inspection...

It isn't broken!!!

24hours on, the pain and swelling has reduced considerably, so hopefully I should be back on my feet and ready to contest some more beach soccer by the weekend.

All I Want for Christmas...

is: some consistent sunshine, a cheaper room to stay in here in Koh Samui and a box of Christmas Chocs!

A new chapter in my travels has started this week. My first without my travelling compadre Nick who has flown back to Blighty for a few weeks to be with his girlfriend - a new world... maybe I'd have to think for myself!

I took a night train from Bangkok, I was expecting a party but got to sit opposite the most tired Japanese man in history. The train pulled away and the sleeper beds were dropped. I got chatting to a guy and before I knew it I was drinking beers for the road (track). Around 7am the next morning we got in to our destination and transferred via Bus to the ferry port. The Sun rose, but sadly couldn't see past the clouds... again.

I boarded the goodship Koh Samui, and before I knew it I was listening to iPod whilst cruising past the surrounding trees. I got to talking to a few people and as conversation developed the sea got noticeably rougher. Then, the front of the boat was raising up by huge amounts... and then dropping the same. Repeat many times over, and 90 mins later - you have a green faced Luke checking out the Starboard bow.

Bah. Not a great start to my Koh Samui experience, but luckily I was able to bypass the usual pack of taxi drivers and jump straight in my personal escort service provided by Andy (from Laos) and Flee; his friend.

The rain eased off and I got to take a dip in the warm sea. The evening time, we drank away our issues with the weather and slept through the ensuing poor days weather.

The following day we hit Chaweng beach - the only one famed on Samui for its surf. I rented a board and then proceded to get a lesson taught to me that not all the worlds waves are as lame as Newquays! 6ft waves battered myself and Andy as we tried our best to get up on top. I was well happy to ride out a couple of waves. After dropping the boards back, we took time out to take a freestyle battering from the waves. The picture you see is 50% humour and about 75% actual fear ;)

***

Christmas, was approaching fast. I recieved plenty of Christmassy themed emails which pretty much reminded me that I was about to miss a Blighty Chrimbo. We made our contingency plan. Presents. Champagne Breakfast. Surfing. 3 course Christmas Dinner. Get in.

Christmas Eve was planned to be a quite tepid affair. We figured we'd party hard on Christmas day, so we arrived in town and played chess while watching a local live band play. A few drinks went down, then some dinner, before we knew it we were in the busiest part of Lamai beaches main strip... I couldn't wait for Christmas - mainly due to my huge cake of 1000 firecrackers I'd bought especially to mark midnight. Taxi's swerved as the explosions blew up thousands of pieces of Red confetti.

Inside the club we went and boogied to a few Christmas tunes with a bucket load of other Westerners.

***

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a cockroach;
The stockings were hung by the ceiling fan with care,
In hopes that good weather soon would be there;
Luke was nestled all snug in his bed,
While visions of bikini babes danced in his head;
And Mimiaow in her 'kerchief, and I in my Burberry cap,
Had just settled down for a long drunken nap,
When out on the beach there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see who'd let off stupidly loud chinese fireworks.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen torrential rain
Gave the lustre of early morn to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a beer bottle, and eight tiny shots
With a little old brew, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be the barman from the pub we just left...
I hadn't paid my bill and he chased for the thrill.

***

Apologies for the brief poetic interlude there - it's now 1.51am on Boxing day and I thought I'd try and be a little festive.

So Christmas morning arrived and we put to work our purchases. A lovely champagne breakfast overlooking the aqua coloured seas. The sun was shining hard, though the horizon painted a grimmer picture. Dark skies and low pressure followed and before we knew it we were surfing in the pouring rain.

The surf was much lower than previously, so we soon got bored and decided to push on with our pre-booked Christmas 3 course dinner. Satay Chicken, Spring Rolls and Potato/Pork balls got the tradition (!) underway, quickly followed by turkey, Yorkies, piggie in blankets, peas, carrots, stuffing, roast potatoes and gravy. The meal was huge and had all of us beat.

The afternoon was then spent in the 80's tradition of watching a Star Wars movie - Return of the Jedi; with poorly translated subtitles - made it stupidly funny.

Some Apple & Blueberry Pie and ice cream complemented the meal well. All was left to do was call our families, drink some Brandy... and then drink some more beer.

Chess

Bangkok, Thailand

It's been a little while since I embarked on TG 320 from Nepal to Bangkok, I've been taking a rest since writing those huge posts below!

In truth, I've done awfully little since arriving - worth talking about here anyhow! We got out of the airport on Tuesday night and planned to go live it up for the first night in a decent-ish hotel before heading to the backpackers institutions. Though on the bus, we got chatting to a guy called Wes who was able to recommend a good place to stay - just far enough from the Kao San Road (Blackpool Promenade stuck out in Thailand!). The place we're in is pretty good and I think I've stayed in worse Travel Inns in the UK. We both pay about 2 Pounds Stirling per night which is pretty reasonable I reckon!

The first night seems a distant haze already as we learned a quick lesson in how easy it is to drink till '?' O' clock in the morning. By midnight, Wes, Nick and myself had already played some pool after eating Thai curries, and maybe a few beers. The pool place closed so we moved on elsewhere - we were initially told that beer had stopped being served! But not to fear as we could still order spirits... pretty soon after this, we were told we could only order a 'bucket' of booze for the 3 of us to share! 4am rolled around and it was time to crash. Only problem was the next day seemed to have gone by the time we ventured from the room.

Since then we've had time to learn how to turn down all night drink sessions and even made it to a few sights... yesterday!

Having visited Bangkok once before when I was 14, I had some idea of what to expect. The Temple of the reclining buddha was a little dull and the buddha itself was undergoing repair work. We thought things would get a little more exciting at the Crocodile pool housed in the same grounds. Closed.

So then on to Budsit Zoo - we were there all of about 5minutes when the rain started to fall. We hung out in a food court type area as long as we could stand the boredom... finally the waters eased off enough for us to shoot around the various animal enclosures. Bare in mind we're in Thailand in it's late-monsoon season - the zoo wasn't very busy in terms of people or animals, the reptile and nocturnal houses both shut. But hey - just as if those little rascals in Kathmandu weren't enough weeks ago, the monkeys were still cheerfully swinging from tree to tree here. Some Giraffs and Meer Cats filled our sightseeing thresholds for the afternoon.

(I fully recommend avoiding the two above tourist sights if you should ever go...)

We headed over to Siam Square to check out the shopping and also got in some noodles. Stuff here is pretty much as expensive as back home so we returned empty handed but planned to go to the big weekend market the following morning. Siam Square does have a gorgeous shopping mall sat under a sky-scraper that sadly wouldn't let us take photo's - so you'll have to visit for yourself!

We'd also since learned how to have a better time of an evening here, so we dined in style at a restaurant called "Cabbages & Condoms" - named for it's policies for promoting anti-HIV in Thailands villages (and I guess - the promoting of eating cabbage). I had an awesome pork curry with Jasmine rice. Afterwards, we thought we'd try our hands at Table Tennis.

***

The market today was pretty cool, I picked up a few new T's and other bits n pieces. Most notable was the absolute barrage of rain we witnessed - many of the main roads were flooded with 10cms of water which we hear is quite a regular thing during monsoon season - just a shame the season seems to have be dragging a bit this year.

So tomorrow we're looking to head off and get this travelling lark underway proper. Next destination - Ayutthaya

The Dance

V Festival - Chelmsford August 20th-21st 2005

So, my last big kick of the Summer... Glastonbury, Newquay and now V finally rolled its way around. It was the tenth anniversary so the lineup was stronger than usual. In addition they'd increased capacity this year too, so it was starting to get a bit crowded.

This year was the first since 98 that I hadn't camped, so on Friday night I went out with the boys for a few jars on the town. A few jars became a lot of jars and we didn't end up closing our eyes till just before 5am. I awoke at 8.30am - a great way to get your festival weekend off! All the same I got a shower and was ready to get going. The first days highlights included Protocol, The La's, Jet, The Bravery, Kaiser Chiefs, Robert Plant and then finally Oasis - back to their awesome live best. I've not seen such a good set from them since the mid nineties - I was simply stunned! By that point I'd had a quite a bit to drink, and sampled a few balloons full of laughing gas!

So, a walk back to our comfy carpet-floored home for the night, I got some sleep and headed off for day 2. After Oasis the night before, I didn't expect too much for Sunday... I was pleasently surprised. I watched a great set from Idlewild, then caught a couple of songs from Jem including a cover of "In My Place" before that tent just got too hot under the midday sunshine. So, on to the Ordinary Boys, Turin Brakes, The Music (Rob Harvey - my dance god!) and then the slightly OTT Hives - made for an awesome, and far livelier afternoon than I can ever remember at V. To cap off the evening, I saw Franz Ferdinand in superb jovial form followed by the ever hardcore Prodigy live set. My neck was still aching 2 days later... Until 2007, good bye V festival...

As Sure As The Sun

Another year older, a little wiser (emphasis on little), I thought I'd write some words since I've been a busy chappy these past few weeks.

A couple of weeks ago, I travelled around 6 hours to Newquay, Cornwall to revel in the Boardmasters 2005 atmosphere. The weekend was planned months ago and eventually, 10 of us would join up at Rose Cliston camp site.

We had to pitch tents in the rain; never much fun, but we got them up quickly and were soon shooting pool and drinking our first pints of the weekend ahead. The sun eventually broke out on Friday afternoon after we'd spent the day eating pub food and exploring Newquay and the festivities around. A heavy night followed as we hit several bars and then the Walkabout for more drinks and some heavy, heavy air guitaring.

After wasting (or is that 'being wasted' ?!) Friday, I spent a windy overcast Saturday in amongst the waves and found my surfing feet again. I couldn't wait to ride again the next day. Sunday we were blessed with crystal clear blue skies along with the final of the Boardmasters competition. At first the waters were a little crowded with the extra influx of visitors to the beach - but late afternoon, everything just went right. The crowds disappeared and the surf rose up nicely.

These past few weeks, my mind has been fleeting with ideas of where I may surf again on my travels. Just under 2 months to go now, a scary amount of 'things-to-do' seems to be appearing ahead of me. However this weekend I shall throw caution to all that and rock my socks off at the V2005 Oasis, Franz Ferdinand, Prodigy, Nine Black Alps, Idlewild Rock on

Plug It In

Here goes, post no.1...

So, I visited Western Australia when I was 14 years old. I had pretty much the best experience of my life at the time and actually found it pretty emotional to leave. As I sat on that Qantas flight home, I vowed to return to Perth; and see the rest of Australia.

Since that day, my life has changed a lot; I finished secondary school, went on to further education, got my first full time job at 17 years old, and have been employed ever since, not to mention growing hairs in all sorts of different places! I carried on with education nearly the entire time attending evening school and more recently; studied for a degree with the Open University. All this has allowed me a few things with conflicting interest. The money I was earning allowed me to travel a little and take up my favourite past-time of snowboarding. Adversly, annual leave and educational commitments meant I could only get away for as much as 2 weeks in one go - not really enough to get back out to Oz and see some more. So the dream had faded a little.

Last year, after meeting a bunch of cool people snowboarding, I organised a trip for 14 of us to visit California - Lake Tahoe. After waiting an agonising 7 months for the holiday to roll around, we left for Cali and had an amazing time. It had been the first real reminder for me of what the rest of the world had to offer and once again I had an emotional departure.

Thinking on that Virgin Atlantic flight home, I said to myself that I'd make an effort to get away from the UK to work in Australia and New Zealand; 3 months each for 6 months. Though on meeting Nick, 2 weeks later (he'd been away to Cali with the group), he put a new idea in my head of joining him in a 1yr round the world trip including the work that I wanted to experience. I chewed it over for a few weeks before making a decision but eventually decided that I COULD leave my job and my world would NOT come to an end!

In May we purchased our RTW flight tickets, departure date 14th October hitting : Frankfurt, Vienna, Kathmandu, Bankgkok, Singapore, Perth, Auckland, Rarratonga, LA and NYC - all this with a whole bunch of overland travel too. Ever since then I've been getting gear bought and sorting out working visa's and travel insurance etc.

Since May we've also planned a 3 week trek around the Nepalese Himalayas, and loosly planned to snowboard New Zealand for 4-6 weeks next July. I'm also gunning to make enough money in Oz that can support my extended stay in North America... watch this space!
Now it's a little under 3 months till departure, it's just starting to sink in that it's all really happening. The hard work, the saving and tedious e-baying of anything I find that can make me some cash, is nearly at fruition.