Goose has left the building...country...hemisphere

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It's time I actually made an entry onto this blog, so here goes:

Having left most things to sort out for this trip until the last minute (and later!), actually leaving the UK was a very quick and surreal process. I got to stand in Gatwick airport on the sunday morning and wave goodbye to my parents as they got on a plane to Italy. Not the normal way these things go, but to be honest was probably better than the drawn out farewell that usually accompanies this kind of departure.

Jumped on a train to Putney to go and crash on my friends sofa (just like usual), before heading out for food and beer in the old local pub in Putney. The evening progressed in the fairly standard manner - a few beers, some more beers, and a final round of "Pub Guess Who". Basically, it's the board game Guess Who but without the boring questions "Do they have blonde hair?" etc, rather using more interest variations along the lines of "". That's right people, I live a crazy life! ;-)

So, the day of departure was spent being a tourist in London with Rachel, which was awesome. It seemed a bit ridiculous to be heading off around the world without actually having seen the sights of my home city. Fairly confident that by the end of the day, London was glad to see the back of me!

Jumped on my plane to Bangkok, had two or three drinks before passing out - I have an uncanny ability to sleep soundly for a whole 11 hour flight... Landed in Bangkok, straight through immigration and then jumped in a taxi with a dutch dude called Casey to get to my hotel. The cab driver insisted on telling us how bad things were in Bangkok through the medium of sound effects and mime. It went something like this: "Bang bang! Car bomb. Boom. Bang bang. Bad Bangkok. Bang bang!", accompanied with the appropriate gestures and flailing of arms. All good when you've just arrived... To put my parents mind at ease, I'd like to point out that I haven't seen or heard anything whilst here that would suggest anything was happening :-)

So, got settled in and headed down to the bar where I met Matt and Louise, a couple from the UK who were actually living in Brisbane on a work visa. Casey joined us from his hotel and we headed off to Khaosan Road. The rest of the night passed in a blur of SangSom and beer, and an awesome time was had by all. Think I'm going to enjoy this trip :-)

Should probably point out now that Casey turned out to be quite the ladies man and has been officially renamed Case-anova.

Spent yesterday hurtling around Bangkok in a Tuk-Tuk with Matt and Louise, seeing the temples, Buddhas and Grand Palace. Tuk-Tuks are a great way to see things, seeing as how it adds the element of danger to what would otherwise be a simple drive! Pretty much saw everything in Bangkok that I wanted to at this point - I will be back before heading to Australia so can do the rest then.



Got back to the hotel, had a quick splash in the pool and a chat to some more people, before retiring to the bar (you getting a theme yet?). Spent the evening playing poker and a new and dangerous variant of Higher or Lower, which proved quite painful for me as my standard bad luck with this game was enhanced by some seriously bad karma - I should explain... OK, so we went to the Standing Buddha, and there was this dude with small birds in cages that you could pay a small fee to release in front of the Buddha to get good luck etc. Feeling very sorry for these little birds, I decided to do the tourist thing and release a cage of these birds. Upon opening the cage most buggered off sharpish, but one decided to land in front of the Buddha and was promptly devoured by a cat. Now call me paranoid, but that would seem to indicate I've got some seriously bad ju-ju!

Heading off to Chiang Mai this evening on the sleeper train. Heard some very good things about northern Thailand so looking forward to getting out of Bangkok and really starting the adventure. Not going to win any awards for my travel writing just yet, but will stick at this.

Finally, it's still not really sunk in that this is more than just a short trip, but if things continue the way they have started then this is going to be epic!

All the best to everyone back at home, and to my family.

P.S. Sorry for no photos yet - struggling with the internet here! Next time :-)

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