Sorry for the sporadic, and increasingly half-hearted, nature of these blogs. Important news: from October 20 - November 5 I shall be in Europe. First I'll be taking leave from October 20 - 30, visiting Liege, Belgium and London. Then I'll be on a work trip, visiting counter-trafficking organisations in Kiev, Ukraine and Rome, from the 31s to November 5th. If your path happens to cross mine, send me an email :). More importantly, please let me know where the best places to eat in Rome are! And if anyone knows of decent, clean, safe and not too expensive accommodation in [View Full Entry]

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Sydeney... a beautiful city but also a CURSED city. People walk very very fast in Sydney and sometimes they even run. They are also pushy and rude. All of them, except for the people who didn't grow up in Sydney (such as all THREE nice people there - one English guy and two Italians). And they are ALL rich and have stupidly flashy cars. And the food is waaay too expensive and not that great. And they vote for John Howard.* And certainly far too few people hock loogies through John Howard's fence, though at least one person has in recent [View Full Entry]

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Hello all - Please accept my apologies everyone for being a miserable correspondent, and for updating my blog and keeping you abreast of my adventures so inadequately. I have been crazy crazy busy, working a minimum of 12 hour days, working on weekends, completely abdicating my responsibilities as a volunteer English teacher in favour of my responsibilities at my two paid jobs... I'm pretty exhausted. I would like to say that I am aware that the following people particularly deserve emails and so I double my apologies to you: Vanessa, Jesse, Andreas, Malene, Jody (CONGRATULATIONS! Wond [View Full Entry]

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Vang Vieng, Lao PDR - one of the highlights of my time away, to be sure. I walked through clouds of tropical butterflies! It was just glorious. So so beautiful. Lucky me was sent to Laos again for work, from Monday 6 - Wed 8, and so took Friday before off and spent the weekend there. Vang Vieng is a beautiful town, situated on a river, and surrounded by these dramatic karsts - limestone rocks, with many caves within, and covered in green tr [View Full Entry]

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I've just returned from a weird visa run to Laos, where I also had the privelege of attending a Lao wedding. The visa run was weird because I was told a million different things by various members of the Lao and Thai bureaucracies, and I was very worried that I would have to re-enter Thailand on a tourist visa and thus be an illegal immigrant! But in the end it all went smoothly, but with NO thanks to a certain RUDE woman at the Thai Embassy in Vientiane. Hmph. As for the wedding... what a cultural experience. Invitations to Lao weddings [View Full Entry]

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I was lucky enough to have spent 5 days in Singapore, from the 23rd to 27th April. Work sent me there to attend a conference on child sex tourism and sex trafficking, which was from Monday to Wednesday, so I went down on Saturday to enjoy being a tourist there for a few days. The first two nights I stayed in Little India, at the Inn Crowd 2, this great little hostel, very friendly. I did however have to sleep in a room with 29 othe [View Full Entry]

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Koh Pha-Ngan, home to the infamous Full Moon Party, an event of pestilence and pollution I plan to never ever attend, has turned out to be the most pleasant surprise of my travels in Thailand. Pha-Ngan is beautiful. My photos are crap - the colours are so pathetic - but it really is beautiful. I had assumed that it was just a party island, but I was happily mistaken. Pha-Ngan was a very welcome change from Samui - much smaller and quieter than Samui, and the beaches are actually gorgeous, while the main beach is craaaaap at Samui. Pha-Ngan has all [View Full Entry]

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Phwoar, how crap am I at keeping this thing updated... Two months after the above date and I actually write the post. Songkran - Thai New Year - is one of the biggest holidays, if not the biggest, in thailand. The festival officially goes for three days - this year from the 13th to 15th April - though the length varies from region to region. The main festivities comprise throwing water and talcum powder at people and putting this paste on people's faces (I know - madass fun, eh?!). It really is quite mad - the main streets of towns will [View Full Entry]

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One of the most humourous things about living in a country where English is not their first language is the many occasions on which they mangle English. Signs like "Please keep clean. Litter will be offended" can keep me giggling for hours, but, without a doubt, the most fruitful source of laughs here in Thailand (in this regard) is t-shirts. Following is a collection of t-shirt slogans. This shall be updated as necessary. - Dance crazy, till a meal gets - If pigs could fly, I'd be a flying pig-fucker - Define normal. You're despicable. Crazy is more fun that worried. [View Full Entry]

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Only nine months after I arrived here, I have finally decided to embark upon a Splore Bangers mission. My rule is to go to somewhere new or do something new every weekend. There are minimum standards for this - i.e. going to a restaurant I've never been to in my own neighbourhood doesn't really count, but going to a new restaurant in a neighbourhood I rarely frequent, and it being a bit of a mission to get there, does count. Ditto for bars. However, going to an art exhibition counts regardless of where it is. My friends reckon that making a [View Full Entry]

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