Ooo Thailand things....

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Howdy! Yeh, i'm so behind again! As everyone's been so interested, i'm pretty sorry i deleted the randoms comments... what he basically said was how out of order i was saying thai girls in patong were prostitues (er, they are!), that he had a thai girlfriend who was not (i hardly said every thai girl was!) and that consequently i was fucking white trash. He sort of pissed all over his own point with that comment though... you can't have a go at judging someone by judging someone! Hey ho, not heard from him again. Which is a shame really now i'm fired up and ready for it!

So yeh, thought i should give a bit of thai info, maybe explain thew photos... well the king related ones anyway. In Thailand, they love the king. and i mean LOVE! Hell, I'm starting to love the King! Its his 60th anniversary of you know, kinging, this year, but i assume its always like this... Everywhere, all over the country are pictures of king, in robes, with the queen, sometimes in more casual attire... we saw a great one of him reading a map and pointing thailand in thew right direction the other day. But not just that, everyone wears king t-shirts! Those yellow ones in the photos... and they have all sorts, ones thast say 'we love the king' 'we heart the king' sometimes thai, sometimes english... its even a regal fashion statement - in Phuket girls were wearing ones with burberry collars! Special king t-shirt wearing days are monday and friday, but most people just love th kinbg so much they wear them every day! Madness eh? Imagine doing that round our way eh!

Whjat else, yeh, just to clarify, all the temple gold looking places are Wats, which is where your monks 'hang'. You gotta cover your elbows and knees to go in, well you don't have too, as girls in hotpants havce proven to us (nice!) but its meant tobe a bit offensive if you don't dress appropriately. Fine though, its betterthan the mosque full body coverage experience.

Yeh, i'm sure there were other things to explain but i'm tired and its probably dull. so lets get on. We did do stuff inNakhon Sri Thammerat apart from befriend thai pensioners... the shadow puppet mueseum was really good actually. Really friendly people, the wholefamily was involved, and they did a little show for us! A slight adapatation of the original no doubt as it involved a gun scene a mobile phone and a plave crash, but that made it all the better! We even bought souvenirs - bookmarks of the 'jokers' which are the black characters. what we didn't realise until later was that they are actually meant to be black... so really, what we bought is tantamount to a bookmark of a golliwog. Whoops. Whats a bit of racist paraphenalia when travelling eh? Live and learn...

What else... was areally good wat, we even bought flowers and incense and joind the locals for a wee pray... and then that night, we went back to our hotel and watched several awful films on HBO. Oneof themwas about an owl. Imagine that! We also saw Brokeback Mountain, which was really depressing! Oo, the other funny thing was the excessive exercise programs! when we arrived, there were like a hundred odd people in a park all doing synchronised aerobics! Well funny!

Anyway, all this culture and small town ways was too much for us, which is why we went of to Ko Phan ngan and lived it up 90's rave style.... Actualy, the first place we went was on the west of the island, and it was gorgeous and peaceful, and we loved it. After successfully avoidingthe barrage of The Beach viewings in Kho Phi Phi, we relented that night. It was good, but we did nothing for Anglo-French relations, by loudly taking the piss out of the French couple all night, for being French, only to discover that a French couple had snuck in at some point and were watching behind us. Whoopsie! Actaully we've done that a few times... Shell hates the French :o)

We threw the peace away the next day and went off to the party place that is Had Rin, which is where the full moon party takes place. That was a few weeks ago though, Ko Phi Phi oi think, so that wasn't happening for us, but it appears they have a party for every possible type of moon in that town... half moon, dark moon, shiva moon (thats gotta be made up!) We went to for the former. It was fun. It really was! we were well pissed which always helped, but everyone was having such a good time and all the rest, we just fell into it! I mean, it wasn;t good... it was sort of like my hell. Techno trance house music, loads of europeans in UV body paint dancing like fools, glowsticks a-glowing, but you know, on holiday in it! Frankly we were just happy it was happening! It was out in the jungle, and it had been pissing it down all afternoon! The day had been pretty much wasted till then... we planned to go on a boat trip snorkelling, but the wind and dire warnings had put us off. So then we decided to have a wander and hunt out a good beasch just up the coast - but hot sun. hills, and very small but persistent dogs turned us back. Frankly, when it started puring, it was a good excuse for us to have well deserved nap in prepartaion for the eveings festivities.

and that nap turned outto essential, as we didn't get home till gone 6am, and we had to be up at 10. Oh the hangover... i mean, you all know me, my body does not cope well with too much booze. or indeed travelling. So imagine my joy at being faced with 20 hours of journey, bus, boat, bus bus... maybe another bus, when i've got a stinking hangover and have been chucking up. Seriously, one of the worst days of my life! And we did not catch up on that sleep for most of the week... culminating in the sim card losing incident and my cry for a lie-in. That will be in the Bangkok blog though. Next time gadget. Next time....

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