After being amused by extraneous English town names like 'Stow-on-the-Wold' and 'Bourton-on-the-Water' I found myself driving north with Benny & his mate Matt to 'Kingston-Upon-Hull' when it dawned on me that they weren't really into the whole brevity thing here in the UK... Passing through 'Little-Rissington-of-Four-Score-unto-Twain' and 'Waddington-girt-by-the-Mound-at-the-Angle-to-the-Perpendicular-at-which-the-Mistress-of-the-Stile-did'th-Micturate'... (no, no really... i made them up...) we arrived in the afternoon at a city where the sky was closer to the ground than your average 5 ye [View Full Entry]

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LILA HAS ARRIVED!!! After paying the £45 fee "@$$^"!%$!!!! to pick her up, I can now enjoy the sweet sweet sounds of possibly the most beautiful ukulele in the world! All the way form Margaret River, Western Australia... presenting... the lovely... LILA THE UKE!! [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday was a lovely warm summers day and, as Benny and I had nothing much to do, we decided to take a pleasant country drive to his friend's estate for a leisurely game of badminton in the back garden of his 500 year old mansion! I felt it was a most English thing to do and worthy of an entry! Also, as I was feeling a tad idle in the morning (oh, did I mention that for best effect, you should read this in a posh British accent?) I wondered what my good friends Alaya and Ash were up to, and [View Full Entry]

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Well, despite the lingering desperate need for a job and a place to live, I still feel like I'm on holiday. Went out today with Benny to his grandparents' lake in Gloucestershire and spent the afternoon fishing, drinking lager and playing ukulele. I actually caught a fish! I'm not sure if I ever have caught a fish before, but if I have, none come close to rivalling the size and magnitude of the one I caught today! It was most exciting. There wasn't much action in the lake after that, but the lager and ukulele did a good job of occupying [View Full Entry]

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G'day! Just a quickie from Oxford, as Benny will soon start accuaing me of being a nerd. I arrived yesterday from London in the drizzling rain- yes, it's a lovely English summer- however, today is beautiful and sunny. Stayed the first night at Benny's last night and had a wonderful night's sleep, bar the messages I kept getting from everyone back home at 1:30am, 3:30am, 3:50am and 6am respectively! im seven hours of timezones behind people! anyway< this keyboard has decided to start dying>>> onto the photos: [View Full Entry]

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Ahh, the land of greasy fried things, stuffy men in suits and rain! I got in at... some... time... or other... didn't really have a grasp on that sort of thing after probably 24 hours of solid travel. I definitely found it hard to beleive that I managed to leave Ko Tao one morning and be flung halfway across the world to England by the next afternoon! Surprisingly, though I don't have any jet lag today! Red met me at the airport and we come back to Fulham, got a bite to eat and a few beers (oh god! GOOD English [View Full Entry]

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From space, the middle-east looks like the surface of the moon. The day was light for 20 hours. My consciousness faded in and out on occasions. [View Full Entry]

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Well, I can hardly say it's the end of the road... I still have a good 20 hours of travel ahead of me. I'm stuck in Chumphon for another hour before jumping on the bus to Bangkok. I say stuck, because there is NOTHING to do in Chumphon (except eat- the night market is surprisingly good!) I even had to add it to the 'Places' list in Travelblog! Seems I'm the first who bothered reporting anything from here! :P Left Koh Tao today along with every last trace of tropical paradise I will be encountering for a while! From here it's [View Full Entry]

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Right, well now I'm an IMMOBILE hermit (in more ways than one- my mobile is still out of batteries) stuck way out on an obscure cliff at the end of a mile-long, untamed trail through inhospitable jungle. I went snorkelling this morning, which was beautiful until I carved up my feet good and proper on some angry coral. In resignation from the 'Big Day'' I had planned, I hobbled back up my 50-odd steps and decided to spend the rest of the day on my verandah writing songs and listening to music. Not a bad alternative, really- however, round about 1 [View Full Entry]

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Made it to Ko Tao in one piece- just! The last two days have felt like about 2 weeks of torture, delirium and bad curry. Today, though I am feeling the most awake, lucid and alive that I have felt in about... god knows how long! I'm flying solo once again, which is refreshing in a way -said seeya to Pete and Benny on Monday after spending nearly a month on the road with them. I'll be seeing Benny again in Oxford in a week, though which will be tops! I'm currently staying in another "KP14"-style bungalow (see ko pha ngan [View Full Entry]

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