Paul Crate Goes International!

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[Paul Crate, well known Evershot resident, is on a round-the-world tour and has promised us a word or two from time to time. Here's the first instalment from Nepal, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos.]

Sunday 4 April 2004

'No can do? whats that, a place near kathmandu? meet me halfway nick.'

Namaste from nepal.

The rafting trip was absolutely quality, 5 days trekking and attacking the marsyangdi (meaning 'raging river' apparently), we had a pretty good group who were almost as keen for making and drinking rum punch every night as we were, we only had one official 'swimmer' who was bernhard, a german bloke with a cracking sense of humour (its amazing what international stereotypes this trip is getting rid of!) and he didn't really count as a swimmer because the only reason he fell out was because we tried to shoot a large rapid backwards for fun, i ended up in the next section of the raft and bern was finished in the drink but it was a great laugh. our guide was a bloke from hong kong called basant who was a top man but ever so slightly deranged, his old man was a british gurkha which might explain something ... We also all fell out on numerous occasions when we tried to go down smaller rapids all stood on the walls of the raft and all sat in the back with the raft folded in half over us and other silly things, but that didn't really count and it was all good fun, the water was freezing cold because it came straight down from the mountains so after being sat in the hot sun in the dry for ten minutes you certainly got a shock when you got wet again.

We've come to nepal at the wrong time of year really as its just leading up to the monsoon season so the views aren't as spectacular as they would be when the mists clear after the rain,but they're still pretty jaw dropping all the same. �We woke up one morning after sleeping outside by the river bank (all of the places we camped were gorgeous, in the middle of nowhere in huge valleys and always right by the water) and there was a massive snow covered peak �reflected in the sun that we hadn't seen the night before because the mist had come in by the time we got there, great backdrop for breakfast. �Learnt some more drinking games which are incredibly silly and actually caused our whole group to go to bed in all sorts of states at 9pm on the last night.

After the rafting we went to pokhara which was less hectic and generally nicer than kathmandu, right on the side of a large lake and with much less chance of getting run over.We walked up a large 'hill' (they're versions of hills over here are very different to ours at home though!) next to pokhara to a little settlement called sarangkot which had stunning views of the annapurna mountains, stayed in an EXTREMELY basic room for about 25p per night for the 3 of us, unfortunately we had to share said room with spiders about the size of a side plate, i'm not really scared of spiders but these were BIG and as rossy doesn't get on with crawly things generally and �zimb has some pretty over active arachnaphobia they weren't best pleased - you know in scooby doo where shaggy jumps in to scooby's arms and they both tremble? say no more.

We played a quality game of ludo with some local kids whilst we were up there, which was a great way to cross the language barrier but they did have some rules which we just couldn't fathom out no matter how much we spoke slowly and clearly to each other in our own languages, then the following morning we got up before sunrise (i'm sure i slept more when i had to work!!) and went up to the look out point to see the mountains - proper gorgeous, even with the hazy mists that were around the views were fantastic and quite surreal really (the phrase 'surreal really' has probably got a clever name like oxymoron but i can't think what it is at the moment), before making our own way down to pokhara again - by 'our own way' i mean that there no way zimb had a clue where he was going except for the fact that if we were going downhill it must be the right direction, but we made it in one piece.

Spent an afternoon on the lake in a rowing boat trying to capsize and nearly getting shot when we ventured too close to the palace grounds (the king was actually in residence whilst we were there so the small sandbag houses full of soldiers with large guns that were strategically placed around his garden weren't overly welcoming or friendly - we didn't think we looked anything like maoist extremeists but they didn't seem keen to discuss it with us) after which we went out for food and got food poisoning from some suspect 'steak' burgers we ate. Rossy got it the worst and the following day we had to spend nearly nine hours on a bus with no toilet coming back to kathmandu, we got stuck in traffic for an hour and a half and i thought he was going to start killing people!! it was quite reminiscent of that girl from the exorcist if you can imagine it ...

We had a flight to go and see everest and its chums yesterday morning which again was fantastic but pretty difficult to explain, lets just say they're very large, very impressive and look like you could do with some thermals on and at least one pair of mittens if you're going to think about climbing them. Unfortunately it was slightly tarnished by the fact that the plane we were on had no toilet and we were running on borrowed time!! Rossy still managed to get a photo of himself in the cockpit with his extremely oversized pair of aviators on though so all missions were completed. Now we're taking things easy and trying to make plans for bangkok where we shall arrive on monday, see you there ...

International enough-of-the-jokes-about-lady-boys-in-thailand cratey!!

Tuesday 13 April 2004

New country, new madness!

Morning! we arrived safe and sound in thailand and found ourselves in the swankiest hotel i've ever seen in my life, feeling more than just a little self concious in our scruffy clothes and sandals we checked in and went through the usual childish ritual of bouncing on the beds, playing with all of the toys and buttons and phones and stuff in our room before exploring the hotel. it was called the Asia and had its own shopping centre, two swimming pools,a free gym (used that loads obviously), people who got the lift for you and saluted as you got in (one of the ladies had a bit of a soft spot for rossy as he saluted back every time, she thought it was hilarious) and even its own sky train station, yes, sky train - how cool is that, we spent quite a few hours just riding round bangkok on it getting quite lost. other cool stuff we've seen include a machine that can print you off any newspaper from anywhere in the world in 2 minutes and an automatic foreign money exchange machine, ahhh its nice to be back in the civilised world!

We then met up with christina (zimbs girlfriend) and her mate ollie and promptly went out on the razz, the red bull they have over here is completely and utterley lethal, it comes in medicine bottles and is seriously strong, apparently its got something quite nasty in it that means you won't get it through customs in the uk so unfortunately i can't send a suitcase of it home!

The following night we decided to check out bangkoks infamous gogo bar scene (after all, we didn't come here for a haircut) and we weren't disappointed. Shocked, stunned and perhaps even a little scared but not disappointed, we saw the very well documented pingpong ball tricks, the just as famous banana exploits, two coke bottles doing a vanishing act and the creme de la creme of a woman popping balloons from a distance of about 8 feet with some kind of darts that i didn't want to take a closer look at, i'm sure i never saw eric bristow using THAT method!! We'd had enough and decided it was time to leave when we realised the man sat next to us was getting some executive relief right in the open and that was just too disgusting so we gave up and went to the pub, its just not right!

The tuk tuk driver (three wheeled cab type things, similar to the rickshaws in india but much beefier) who took us home that night had obviously had too much red bull as he took great pleasure in driving like a lunatic all the way back to the hotel and pulling massive wheelies at every set of traffic lights, all the fun!

We also went to see the caberet show in our hotel, famed as the best ladyboy show in bangkok, in all aspects of it being a caberet show it was very good, amazing costume changes and elaborate scenery, some great impressions of tina turner, birley shassy, monroe and michael jackson(?) but the men/women/whatever they are that were performing were just plain WRONG, i don't know if they'd gone the whole hog and had the whole op or partial op or what but some of them you REALLY couldn't tell, and i know you're all sat at home saying, 'don't be silly of course you could tell' but you really honestly couldn't, some of them obviously were mincing far more than any woman would and others had hilariously deep voices but a couple of them were worryingly attractive, its the last thing i want to say or admit to but they were, its just wrong wrong wrong (Ann, don't worry, you've got nothing to worry about!!).

Another quite enormous change in our travelling adventures has been the departure of a certain mr pakes, rossy unfortunately got his dates wrong and missed the races in bangalore in india, therefore the extra grand he'd planned on winning there and financing his way round thailand with didn't materialise and so he's had to go on to australia early and get himself a job but it sounds like he's going to try and save money there and come out to meet us again in bali, which will be an obscenely messy reunion piss up,but it won't be the same without him. (ahh, getting all deep again eh mate?)

we've now made our way down to ko samet which is a little island about 3 hours south of bangkok and are loving the beaches, i won't go on about it as i know its still cold at home but not even judith chalmers has been anywhere this idyllic i'm sure!

we're just going to relax here for a bit until christina's happy that her tans better than zimbs and then we'll make a plan ...

have fun and keep me up to date with any gossip

international its-not-right-you-know cratey

p.s.arsenal are having a storming end to the season again aren't they?

Thursday 22 April 2004

Sun, sand, surf, spiders, snakes, SHIT!

Hi, just a short one to say we're all still alive, we had a quality boat tour around ko samet where we went fishing off of the boat, barbecued our catch on board for lunch and then went snorkling for the rest of the afternoon, very gorgeous stuff, loads of weird zebra fish around zooming about llike a 'jaws' special effect and lots of swallowing sea water due to swimming deeper than my snorkle was long (if you know what i mean?). We then got acted like we were 12 and started jumping off of the top of the boat and doing somersaults and stuff before the inevitable belly flops and backslaps made us act our age again!

we've now moved to 'lonely beach' on ko chang which is a national marine park and very gorgeous, we've got another little wooden hut but this time its right on the beach, i could probably chuck a stone in the sea from our porch with my left hand, its great!!

we've also invested in some hammocks which are hanging from our porch and impossible to leave once you've got in to them, they're SO comfy its untrue, i'll certainley be sending one home even if i can only use it for about 3 weeks a year!!

today we've been up to look at some waterfalls near the centre of the island which were nice, had a bit of a swim in the pools they fed and a wander around the rocks surrounding them, telling each other that we'd just seen snakes and spiders and tigers and stuff is always good fun as one of us usually falls for it and fills they're shorts!!

better go now, i can hear my hammock calling!!

international covered-in-sand cratey

Friday 30 April 2004

Don't drive over any mines or anything ...

Morning campers!

After wedging ourselves firmly in our hammocks at ko chang we did manage to go on a boat tour of 5 of the surrounding islands, it was quite similar to the tour we did at ko samet but the snorkling was much better, you could see right to the bottom of the ocean really clearly, even when it was over 30feet deep, we saw loads of mental neon fish in massive shoals that flicked and turned like a light show when you got near them, we saw some squid meadering along looking like they had some sort of design fault and should be swimming the other way, a MASSIVE clam (no, there was no beard) that was bigger than a basket ball and shut up quick when you waved a hand near it and all manner of spikey, rough and moving coral that really did look like it was from another planet, it was quality, we spent most of the day snorkling and were absolutely knackered by the end of it, saw some starfish and just all manner of big swimmy things that i cant explain, great stuff. that night we were playing some frisbee in the sea as the sun went down and one of the larger, big pointy-nosed fish (see, i know all of the technical latin names now!) that we'd seen before and been told was poisonous just started leaping out of the water and heading straight for us dolphin style, it jumped right between me and zimb and then dived and disappeared about 3 feet from ollie, at which point we all started on the jaws theme tune and promptly got out of the water,game over!

We left ko samet just as it started to piss it down (thailand is just starting its monsoon season, hence we've done a runner!) and we got absolutely soaked, i don't think i mentioned before how much ko samet looks like the island from jurrasic park but once the rains started it really was from 65million years ago! it was helped pretty convincingly too by the presence of laurence and florence (named by kristina) the two HUGE lizards that lived in the roof of mine and ollies shack, larry was over a foot long and flo was probably about nine inches (ann, don't go and get a tape measure or you might not talk to me again!!), problem was my mossie net was obviously set up just below the part of the roof they liked to use as their toilet so every night i'd have a half digested moth or cockroach encased in shit to remove before i could get in to bed - pleasant!

From ko samet we went to Trat which is near the border of cambodia, spent the afternoon there changing money and doing general boring jobs (still in the rain), had a look around the market which finished at about midnight and then started setting up again around 3am (bionic thais!).

Before setting off at 5 to get a minivan to the cambodian border, got in to the country fairly easily, (although we did nearly miss our boat due to some poor directions from the 'woman' on reception.) because if you didn't have a medical card you could pay a 'fine' of 50 baht and you didn't need it, if you didn't have any passport photo's there were more 'fines' and everyone was very helpful and friendly - albeit because they probably had some sort of sideline going somewhere.

We are now in sihanookville in south-west cambodia which is the coastal beach resort of the country, its really weird because the country is obviously adapting fast to becoming a traveller destination (its very much like india in some ways, locals are either fascinated by you and want to come and chat to practice their english or they look at you with extreme apprehension as if you're from another planet, but we feel very safe so far) so everybody deals and quotes prices in us dollars, then if you want anything thats less than a dollar you convert it in to riel - the local currency, so you can often end up paying in two different currencies, but i suppose we'll get used to it.

We ate at the snake house resteraunt yesterday after hiring more mopeds (they drive on the right over here, well, sometimes-like i said its very like india!) which had all manner of snakes in cases, a crocodile by a pond next to where we were eating. they also had scorpions and even snakes IN the tables where you eat, with glass tops on looking straight down on to them as you tucked in, quite strange.

From here we'll head along the coast to Kampot for a bit, then up to phnom penh to tour the ankhor wat (old inca style temples that used to have a population of over a million before they just disappeared!) and then on to the killing fields.

Cambodia also has quite a large mine problem from when good old uncle sam thought they were incahoots with the vietnamese and thought the best idea was to blanket mine most of the country (great idea that one!), so we'll not be wandering happily around in the wilderness looking at the local flora and fauna because it tends to hurt you're feet. (we met a cambodian girl yesterday with only one arm, she's been living in germany for ten years and spoke really good english, but we thought she'd probably had the 'what happened to your arm' conversation once too often so we left it alone and just chatted about holidays).

Other than that we've just been cruising round and getting a bit of a feel for the place, went for a swim near the harbour yesterday and surfaced from being underwater about 3 feet from a large poo, but other than that, we've not done much!!

i'll write again when we get to phnom pehn probably, so, as they say in russia, moscow!

international treading-carefully cratey

Thursday 13 May 2004

Seems like we've done an awful lot since i last wrote but i'll try and recap. We arrived in phnoem penh, cambodia's capital a couple of saturdays ago, found a nice guesthouse by the lakeside and introduced ourselves by promptly going out on the beer. went in to town on the motorbike taxi's that everyone uses here, which would usually be quite hairy but bearing in mind nobody in the city drives over 30mph its not really a problem, its quite strange though as theres no speed limit or traffic police, and its not COMPLETELY congested (like bankok for example) but just everyone drives really really slow. It makes for quite a relaxed atmosphere to the whole city which is quality as i cant usually stand big cities for too long. learnt another drinking game (number 374 i think) and went to the 'heart of darkness' which is reputedly the best night club in the city (unless you wanted 'boom boom pretty lady' of course in which case theres a choice of thousands!) unfortunately the heart.. played 'its raining men' along with other cheesy classics so we weren't exactly sampling typical khmer nightlife shall we say.

We woke the next morning to find all of the staff from our guest house were firmly entrenched in a vigorous sunday club drinking session, and had been from about half 8 that morning, they were dancing around and singing and having a right old time, we tried to stay out of it but by two o'clock they'd forced free beer and vodka upon us (yeah, FREE! good eh?) and we had to join them. handled glasses for sunday too you'll all be pleased to hear! Just mooched around trying to get our bearings on monday and then tuesday and wednesday we went 'sight seeing'. We went to tuoeng sleng (speeling?) or S-21 as its better known, which was the school that the khmer rouge transformed in to a prison-cum-torture chamber when they were in charge, it's very difficult to explain how nasty it was because a lot of it has just been left alone so its still very real looking, the classrooms they used for torture have still got the original beds with shackles still on them left in there, and they've all got a solitary picture on the wall of the room with someone on the bed after they were 'finished with,' 3 or 4 other rooms were filled with mug shots of the people who were taken there, people from about 4 years old, up to 60 or 70, their expressions in the photo's just completely leave you speechless, some of them have a murderous look on their face as if they're about to kill the photographer, others look as if they have just given up on life and it would all be much easier if they could just die now, there are other, much more graphic photo's of people starving, people who've been beaten to within an inch of their life, and even one of a man the whole of his face missing which made me struggle for breath, you can't really explain it.

They also had many of the original torture instruments and devices, paintings drawn by people who were involved that show what happened there and cases of bones and skulls from previous victims, a truly horrific place. we also took a look around the royal palace which was HUGE and extremely ornately decorated, silver tiled floors, a solid emerald buddah, and more gold and silver than you could shake several sticks at. They have unofficial shooting ranges over here too, the army aren't overly well payed so they supplement their salaries by charging tourists to come and play with their toys! its all very under the counter but you turn up and they give you a little 'menu' of what you can shoot from m16's to ak-47's, all live rounds and genuine arms that are still in use, they've got pistols for $10 and automatic rifles for between $20-30 right up to a proper rocket launcher for 200 bucks!! it does get a little bit sick though as you can also buy chickens to shoot with the guns or a cow to fire the rocket launcher at for a further 200 dollars!

Ollie was the only one to have a go and shot an AK which made us all shit our pants because it was so loud and spat shell cases at us, very manly..... We went and looked around the national museum which was ok (not great though as most of anything worth looking at was destroyed by the khmer rouge whilst they were on their 'mindless desecration of everything' mission) and also went to the killing fields which again, have been left quite undisturbed which adds to the eerieness, original clothes and bones are still in the mass graves, there's a marker by the tree they used to kill children (hitting them against it to save bullets) and an enormous building with over 8000 skulls in it that they dug up from the surrounding area, all arranged in sex and age order, very, very harrowing stuff.

We found out that there was going to be an international khmer boxing tounament going on in the national stadium so we thought it would be a waste not to go and see that as we were fortunate enough to be here while it was on, we managed to get seats fairly close to ringside, about six or seven rows back but bearing in mind the blokes in front of us had more than a few flutters going on (some sort of betting ring we decidede by the end of it) they got over excited and everyone was standing on their chairs by the second or third fight! The cops and security didn't really like this though and came over and started pulling everyones chairs out from under them (not us though, they really value their new found tourist status over here). Then, the highlight of the evening was the title fight between the cambodian champion and an australian challenger. The champion was HUGE though, much bigger than the ozzie challenger so we smelt a fix before it even started, then the skinny ozzie started looking pretty good, putting some really good combo's together and generally being quite quick and nippy, the cambodian tried to unload on him once but failed and we thought he was just waiting for the right moment to muller the poor little bloke, but as the rounds went on the khmer bloke was tiring and it looked fairly nailed on that the ozzie was going to beat him ... then a bottle of water hit the ring ... and then another ... and then about fifty more, we were all getting pelted by the extremely unhappy locals in the top tiers, bottles were hitting the fighters and the ring and loads were falling short and hitting everyone in the crowds! the fighters did a runner (drawn match, hmmmm) and we all had to put the chairs we had over our heads and run for cover, it was madness! then people started chucking the chairs about and we decided that as we blatantly didn't look very local and it might get nasty it could be an idea not to hang around, so we got moto's back to the guest house and found everyone back there watching it live on tv! there never was any trouble but the following morning the papers were full of reports defending the local champion, giving all sorts of excuses like he'd been bitten by a dog and all sorts of crap, we couldn't get one local to admit that he was going to lose either!!

Zimb and i found a trance and hard house night on at the local 'viper' club which was being run by two australians who'd just moved out here, unfortunately we were the only people there, ollie and kristina were busy getting close with their respective toilets and the only other people in there were girls 'looking for business' shall we say, so we didn't stay long - good tunes though (for anyone who's heard the remix of the omen theme tune, they played that which was quality, oh yeah and they had batman style firemans poles that led down to the dancefloor, how cool is that!!)

This week we've been up to siem reap where we went to a war museum, old tanks, guns, a helicopter, and loads of other nasty killy stuff that they're still adding to as they find more and more just abandoned in the jungle, then we went to a land mine museum that is run by a bloke called Aki ra, he was an amazing bloke, the khmer rouge killed his parents whilst he was a child (his mother was made to dish out food and got killed for giving a starving person extra rice and i think his father was worked to death) then the khmer rouge made him fight for them which he did until he was about 15, then he fought with the vietnamese AGAINST the khmer rouge, both sides made him lay untold landmines and now he works clearing landmines and trying to raise awareness for the problem of mines over here. Some of the inventions that were used over here (and are still very much at large and killing and maiming thousands of innocent people) are just sick, the bouncing betty jumps about a meter in the air when you step on the tripwire and then explodes spraying enough shrapnel to slice anyone in close proximity in half, cigarettes that you leave on the ground and when someone finds it and smokes it, its fine until halfway down a ballbearing shoots back through the fag and in to your face.some of the stories of when he'd been a teenager in the war were just amazing too, especially bearing in mind how young he was but i can't go in to them now as i've got backache from being on here too long already!

We spent a day and a half looking around the temples of Angkor too which were all built between the 9th and 14th centuries by a succession of kings and rivalled anything we saw in india, apparently they filmed the first tomb raider at one of the temples there but i can't imagine it does it much justice, they're huge and some of the stone carving details were just amazing - theres a series of religous fables carved around the base of one of them that kind of reminded me of the bayou tapestry we went to see in france with school, but much bigger and carved in to stone which i should imagine is much more difficult to correct any mistakes with!

the scale of some of the temples is just staggering, religion can inspire humans to some pretty fantastic feats sometimes, but then it can also cause an awful lot of trouble too ...

we have now got our vietnam visas and are headed that way at the weekend, in to saigon via a 3 day cruise up through the mekong delta which should be good, i'll let you know when we get there!

take it easy

international i'd-write-more-but-then-i'd-walk-like-quasimodo cratey

p.s. you can all keep your jokes about looking like quasimodo anyway!!

Wednesday 21 July 2004

'Nam!

ok, things have been pretty hectic for the last few weeks so i'll try and remember what we've been up to, as i talk so much piffle i'll do it in stages so you don't fall asleep or in to a coma or anything like that!

Left cambodia to go in to vietnam via a 3 day mekong delta trip which was good, as soon as we got in to vietnam it was noticed that everybody really does wear those straw pointy hats like in the war movies, but not only that, they also keep their pyjamas on ALL day, its quality and they look really comfy but i think if i started dressing like that no-one would talk to me anymore so i'll have to remain boring for a while yet. (Wait till i retire though, i'll be going to the pub in my PJ's and slippers straight away!)

we stopped in chau doc on the south coast and went out on the mekong for the day, visited a cham minority village where they dressed us up in extremely silly hats and skirts for everyone to laugh at and take photo's with which to bribe us later in life, then visited a floating fish farm where they farm fish (i could go into detail as our guide was very informative but i'm sure you'd only be humouring me), it was pretty impressive when we got to feed them though, frenzy doesn't even begin to describe it, jaws would've been scared! After this we cruised up and down for a bit looking at the floating villages and markets, some of the floating shacks even had air conditioning, it was mad! the markets were good and extremely manic, kind of like wall street on small canoe's full of mystery stuff, but then again no-one on wall street goes to work in their pyjama's so thats not strictly true.

From chau doc we got a minivan to Can Tho with a lunatic who insisted on shouting out of the window at every person and vehicle that we drove past, we did manage to take our minds off of him for a while to watch the odd old lady sat next to ollie who had a small bottle of brown liquid that she kept inhaling from, it stank the bus out and after a while it made her puke in to a small plastic bag which was pleasant!

didn't do an awful lot in can tho, wandered around and got stared and pointed at quite a lot and got another boat to a 'tourist village' type place, quite nice - they had a little area at the back where they kept animals, they had a little dwarf bear, some alligators, birds and stuff, but as we kept walking round the enclosures got smaller and smaller, they had a very small cage with 3 monkeys in it and then a cage about the size of a bird cage with quite a big monkey in it. he had quite obviously gone mad as he hugged himself in a really weird way and had a big bald spot on his arm where he had been biting himself, it was gross. but it still got worse, they had another bird cage sized cage with 3 kittens in it in a little house, the cage stank and the kittens were just mewing and mewing, upon closer inspection the little house they had to shelter in had another kitten in it, but he was dead and looked like he had been for a few days, not nice.

the next day we visited a tofu factory and a big warehouse where they de-husked and generally 'sorted' rice, you could hardly breathe in there from all of the dust and i'm sure the guys who worked there are going to have some serious problems after a while - i don't think 'health and safety' are much used words in this part of the world!

next was ho chi minh city (or saigon as it used to be known - saigon is now an area in HCMC [see, interesting AND informative, zzzzz...]) which was very developed and modern and just completely mad and hectic, everyone gets about on motorbikes and there are about 80 billion of them in saigon. crossing the road is actually lots of fun, instead of waiting for a gap in the traffic (which would be silly because there isn't one - ever) you just walk slowly into the road and the traffic kind of flows around you! it sounds crazy (and it is) but it works, the first few times you do it you completely shit your pants but after a while its great, you don't even need to break stride!! we saw a couple of accidents whilst we were there too, but nothing serious, two bikes bump into each other, their owners get up, dust themselves off pick up their bikes and set off again! they don't argue or try to blame anything on each other, they just carry on, its weird.

had a good wander around and did lots of touristy things, went to the reunification palace where the sort of last stand was during the 'american war' as they call it, it was quite an interesting building (as buildings go) as it was built to resemble lots of different vietnamese symbols that mean things but its quite difficult to explain it in writing so i won't bother (come on, i am on holiday!). we also tried to go to the Notre Dame cathedral (that must be on holiday as well as i'm sure it's usually in france) but it was closed - ah, definately on holiday then.

next on the list was the war remnants museum which used to be called something like the 'american war atrocities museum' but some yanks got a bit arsey about it and they had to change the name to something a bit more P.C. i think this museum is probably the most harrowing thing i've ever been to, worse than the killing fields or S-21 museum in cambodia, and worse than the henry pieterson museum in soweto.

Because the war was so well documented there were hundreds of photos, and i think the previous name for the place was much more accurate. there were photos of soldiers with rows of heads in front of them (one of the soldiers was even smiling and had one by the hair) there was a soldier carrying half a body over to throw it on to a pile of corpses, victims of phosphorous bombs and napalm, and then a whole section on disfigured and mutated people (from foetuses to adults) that resulted from exposure to the aftermath of napalm, you can't really explain it, it sort of makes me feel empty even thinking of it now. there was even a foetus in a jar in there but i somehow missed this and zimb told me about it afterwards, i wasn't going to go back in to find it.

It seems like tourism is still in its infancy in vietnam though as most places we went to weren't really set out very well which made it confusing, this museum was a prime example as it was almost like they'd taken everything they had regarding the war (from photos and handwritten letters to old bombs and even a howitzer) and just sort of chucked it all in one place, mind you i wouldn't want the job of sorting through it and putting it in to any sort of order, i think you'd lose the will to live.

We also went to visit the Cu Chi tunnels which are a reconstructuion of the ones that the viet cong used in the war, there was a section about 60m long that you could go through that was pretty small, and they'd even made them 40% larger than the original ones! quite a few of the people wouldn't go down them because they were so confined. They also showed us all of the various booby traps that were used against the americans, they were well nasty - bamboo spikes on rollers that would pierce under your arms when you fell in to a hole, metal spears with barbs pointing in different directions so that when you fell on them you couldn't pull away or get pulled out without making things worse, and a nasty looking pendulum thing that spiked you in the face when you opened a door - pleasant. Again this place was strange as it was almost disney-fied - the guides taking you round were trying to have a laugh and a joke with you and cracking jokes about the most inappropriate things, then they took you to a shooting range where i turned into a complete hypocrite and tried out shooting an AK-47 - what can you do eh?

We bumped in to an irish couple who we'd been on the mekong delta tour with and got jolly shitfaced with them, and the following day caught the bus to mui ne. Ollie didn't fancy staying in mui ne so he stayed on the bus and went to nha trang whlilst zimb, kristina and i stayed one night in mui ne and then got another bus to dalat. Dalat was quality, it completely escaped the war because it was used by both the north and the south vietnamese as a retreat for their higher ranking officials, it seems mad that with so much conflict and killing going on officers and generals from both sides stayed a few hundred meters from each other in plush green surroundings in nice little holiday bungalows!

spent our first afternoon in dalat squelching around town looking for somewhere to watch the FA cup final that night (had i mentioned its monsoon season? no? oh funny that, hope you're all enjoying the sunshine at home!) as it was pretty out of the way and not on the tourist track, there were very few people about that could speak english so even finding somewhere to eat wasn't simple, let alone somewhere to watch the footy!! i made a prize arse out of myself trying to buy some toothpaste in a chemist too, speaking very loudly and slowly (as we all seem to do for some reason when people don't understand - as if it helps!) and doing lots of very over animated actions trying to explain it was toothpaste i wanted and not a tooth brush, while the woman behind the counter looked at me very strangely as i finished saying "TOOOOOOTH PASTE?" and she replied i haven't got any but they sell it over there!

Anyway, we found out the only place showing the footy in the whole town was the cinema! it was packed and they sold beer and everything! needless to say we had a top night and finished up playing pool in a bar with the landlord who was completely insane, not to mention being called mr dung - best!

We organised a tour in Dalat with a freelance group of tour guides called the 'easy riders', basically they were in south vietnam when the war ended (and the north won) so everyone who had any decent social standing or useful jobs, such as teachers, doctors, high ranking officials etc, had all of their �documents taken away and pretty much didn't exist any more, they couldn't get jobs or stay in the city and most of them became rickshaw drivers (and judging by the amount that shadily asked us if we wanted 'smoke?' they were part-time drug dealers too) or had to find other ways of making money to support their families.

ANYWAY, this is where the easy riders came from, they were all vey fluent in english, extremely knowledgable (sp.) and had all had a top top sense of humour. They worked out of brief cases on their bikes as they didn't have an office and gave us a top tour. showed us the massive flower gardens where most of the offering flowers used in temples came from for the whole south of the country, a temple with a huge twenty odd foot dragon had been built out of empty beer bottles (would have loved to have helped them out on that one!), a coffee plantation where the best beans are the ripest ones that have been eaten and 'passed' by foxes and weasles (i love tea), and a waterfall that had some random plaster animals all around it and a man in a cowboy suit who you could have your photo taken with (but why you'd want �to remains a mystery...).

The best thing about the tour was the 'chicken minority village' which they took us around, a very rural vietnamese village where they showed us weaving and local textiles, and their farming techniques, we saw very small little wooden and mud shacks (complete with tv aerials...hmmm...) and in the middle of the village was a 12 foot concrete chicken. Brilliant. it was actually an old fertility symbol about a legend of some woman wanting to marry outside of her standing but who cares about that? its a 12 foot concrete chicken for gods sake!

The kind of 'leader/manager' type bloke for the easy riders was called quan, less said about that the better!

other stuff that happened in dalat includes us blagging free internet in a VERY posh hotel because they thought we were staying there, and me getting lost in town with a random bloke we met because he thought i knew where i was going, idiot!

We then headed for Nha Trang and met up with ollie who'd been mugged by a pimp a couple of nights ago, well not really mugged, but one of his 'women' had her hands everywhere as he tried to walk past, stuck her hand in his pocket and took out what little cash he hadn't drank previously and gave it to her pimp, ollie told him to give him his money back and the pimp said 'i haven't got your money.' upon realising it was worth very little, and certainly worth less than any hassle or pain, he thought better of it and walked away to see the funny side of it.

Next day we somehow managed to 'adopt' (as in she wouldn't piss off!) a mad shitfaced 50 year old vietnamese woman in a cowboy hat whilst we were playing pool, she insisted we all call her mama(?) and called me 'skinny-no-bum' until we quickly left and ran away. odd.

i managed to get lost in 200m of straight road between a resteraunt and our hotel because i felt ill, and we met up with the same irish couple again from saigon and the mekong delta trip and, yep, you guessed it, got extremely inebriated in a place called 'the guns and roses bar'. classy.

From Nha trang we got a very sweaty night bus with plastic seat covers and no air conditioning to Hue, unfortunately we got a puncture at about 3am and all had to get off, and then whilst kristina went to the toilet a rat ran over her foot, we spent then next 20 minutes discussing the benefits of being male and the world being our urinal!

In Hue, me and zimb went on a tour of the De-Militerized-Zone, where the majority of the nastyness went down during the war (rodney), which included visiting a famous bridge that i can't remember the name of at the moment (see, very famous), two cemetaries (which always bring home the reality of what war really means, in no uncertain terms either by the size of land these places covered), one of which had two huge panels of plaster reliefs that told the complete history of the vietnam/american conflict.

we also visited khe sahn firebase which was a strategic stronghold on top of a hill, in reality it was just a concrete bunker but the amount and the size of some of the holes in the wall from shells and bullets told quite a story on their own, we saw hamburger hill (named because the americans got minced) and a random empty chassis of a tank that was just left to rot next to a dual carrigeway, i didn't even see what it was until we were stood right next to it.

The DMZ tour took us all day and was a 150 mile round trip on the back of a motorbike, our guide must've laughed for a good half an hour after we got off at the end very stiff and sore and he said "numb-bum?". yeah, funny ha ha.

worth a seperate mention all of its own was a wedding party that we stopped next to, in a bar near some traffic lights, the smell of beer coming out of this place rivalled any stench or fumes we'd come across in either india or bankok and if there were medals for drinking this party could've swept the board. Good work you vietnamese type people!

We looked around the 'forbidden purple city' in hue before we left but it was a bit of an anticlimax as it was swamped by both rain and busloads of japanese photographers. the highlight of this was 9 large brass cannons that weighed five tons each. bet you're rivited aren't you?

We then caught a bus to Hoi An going via some caves in the marble mountains that scared ollie and zimb shitless because of its eight-legged inhabitants! In Hoi An we had a free night in a swanky hotel which we got with our 'all-in' type bus ticket, and made the most of the air con, tv's and plush pool, its rumoured they had to drain the pool and clean the filters after we'd left but these claims are unsubstantiated.

Hoi An is known for its very high quality tailoring industry and every other shop is a custom tailors, for both reasons of fun and with an eye on paying off my enormous debts when i get home (i.e. needing a boring suity type job) we went and acted very clueless in these tailoring shops and sorted out a suit each. i would have loved to have been a fly on the wall as we scoured 'next' catelogues and other glossy type brochures (!) for suit styles and then tried to imagine what this big roll of cloth we were showed would look like in a suit shape. we were so far out of our depth a submarine wouldn't have helped!

Somehow though we all bumbled on through and i ended up with a tailormade, lined, kashmir 3 piece suit (with shirt!) for 40 US$, it probably won't fit when i get home. Me, with a suit. told you asia was mad.

When we came to send our new rags home, we did come across something quite unsettling though, due to the rising problem in southeast asia with child pornography and paedophilia, we weren't allowed to send any photographs, films, disposable cameras or even cd's (as they might be picture cds) out of the country. it struck me that we don't realise quite how disgusting the world can be sometimes.

Finally we set out for hanoi, where we were fast running out of time, ollie and i spent nearly 3 hours waiting for food in a resteraunt where it turned out the chef had gone shopping and left the waitress in charge, she had only been working there two weeks and could only cook burgers. for breakfast. hmm. to find out this information took us an hour and a half, then when she finally brought us our burgers (which took her an hour to cook!) it turned out she couldn't cook burgers after all! we left them half eaten (which went well with the fact they were half cooked!) and left, i was slightly more pissed off than ollie as he'd spent this large waste of our time giving me a good drubbing at that table football game we used to play at school with a coin. pants.

We managed to squeeze in a swift visit to a jazz club on our last but one night which was extremely good fun, we met some mexican people and drank a bottle of paint stripper/vodka.

the others went to a water puppet show which i missed but it turned out not to be too bad as it was all in vietnamese (funnily enough) and made little sense.

then on the first of june we all went to the airport, ollie went to bankok to meet up with his girlfriend (not before getting leathered on ko sahn road and waking up with a tattoo!) whilst zimb, kristina and i caught a flight to vintiene in laos.

Tuesday 27 July 2004

Laos (hands up who said "where?")

After a quick flight over the border we arrived in vientiene in laos, it worked out better overall as it didn't cost very much and saved us a 24 hour bus journey that other people we'd met in vietnam had told us was hell. The airport was extremely nice and well organised, we got our visa for nearly half the price it would have cost us to get it in vietnam before we left and (again on other peoples advise, and because we were short of time) we went straight to the bus station and got on a bus to vang vien.

The bus wasn't too bad either, no one throwing up, no one with guns, no wild animals freaking out, just a small amount of the usual staring, whispering and giggling, standard stuff ... so far.

vang vien itself was a very quiet, small provincial town with an almost wild west feel about it. you could definately visualise two guys stood facing each other in the main 'street' twitching their pockets and looking up at the clock (um ... if they'd had a clock, that is).

The currency in laos deserves a special mention, just because its called kip, not only does it reflect how EXTREMELY laid back the pace of life is, but its also something that the locals do no matter what time of day it is, how hot it is, or even if they'd been doing exactly the same 6 hours ago when we saw them in the same position in their hammock! unfortunately i was disappointed to find that it didn't have the picture of a certain Mr Pearce from evershot on the notes, but you can't have everything i suppose!

We only had just over a week to see a few things so we got organised, or as close to organised as we can get, and investi-ma-gated what there was to do. It turned out there was a large slow moving river in a series of valleys that ended up in vang vien, you could hire some large tractor size inner tubes and just cruise down the river in these valleys for about three hours before reaching a nice bar at the end of it for sunset, very nice indeed. it actually turned out to be even nicer than that because the industrious locals had swiftly put two and two together a long time ago and come up with twenty-two, meaning that every half mile or so along this serene stretch of river was a grinning teenager on the riverbank with a huge box of ice cold beers for sale, i loved the place already! about halfway down was a sort of makeshift bar type thing that had a massive rope swing going out over the water that provided much amusement (and obviously more beer) before we got out at the end of the run a lot more wobbly than when we got in.

the following day we hired push bikes (yes, push bikes - i know, the temperature's in the late 30s and we've hired pushbikes, it seems easy to see it was stupid idea now, but at the time ... ) and went off to explore some caves, the first lot we saw involved one of the sweaty-est climbs up through the jungle you could ever imagine, fighting off a number of hybrid pterodactyl/mosquito type creatures, before we came across some americans who had just tried to go in to the caves and found out that the ladder was rotten and had crumbled when they touched it, seeing how deep and dark the first fall/climb would have been we decided against it and just enjoyed the view.

To get to the next cave involved some quite hair raising going-quickly-downhill-and-out-of-control bike riding (was it buzz lightyear who called it 'falling with style'?) before finding some stunning scenery of HUGE cliffs that appeared from nowhere and surrounded some really lush paddy fields, we played a short game of charades with a crumpled looking 140 year old local and he gave us an antique mining torch and pointed in the direction of one of the cliff faces.

We wandered off and found a couple of Geordie guys walking back towards us and looking a bit flustered - they'd got about 200m into the cave and the antique mining torch they'd been given had run out of batteries! they'd had to crawl out in the pitch dark and were covered in clay. We started to get nervous.

It actually turned out to be amazing, you could go into the cliff for what seemed like miles, it was soaking wet inside and we ended up on our arses in the clay many many times, but we had a really good wander round and found loads of bats and stalagmites&tites (that's pronounced tights, not titties - i know who thought it too!). We managed to get out without our torch running out and found a little pool just to the side of the entrance of the cave where there were 3 local kids playing and splashing around. They looked at us pretty wide eyed and came over to investigate, one of them had a little pea shooter type thing that he'd made out of some bamboo and took great pleasure in showing us how it worked, and then shooting us with it (yeah,funny!), i confused them all by getting them to try and do the vulcan hand signal from star trek (borrowed this from rossy, cheers mate!) - which is very difficult when you're only about 6 or 7 and caused a lot of frowning. I was very happy and the hustle and bustle of western life seemed miles away - then one of the smaller kids concentrated very hard, and in pretty broken english asked me 'what.....is....your...name?' and then grinned broadly from his achievement, i slowly explained my name was paul, and asked him the same question back, he struggled and concentrated once more before coming back with 'my......name.....is.........beckham!' yeah, getting away from it, hustle and bustle, all that sort of crap!!

Next on the map was luang prabang (i'm not making these names up, i promise!) where we first went and had a good look around the night market, it looked quality as it was just a normal road which they closed off, and everyone just laid out their stuff for sale underneath a single light bulb each, when there's hundreds of them disappearing off in to the distance it looks quite spectacular and ALMOST made you forget the fact that this was a market, and you were shopping, almost.

From here we visited some HUGE waterfalls at a place called kouang xi, they had a big enclosure with a tiger which was pretty cool (not the photo i sent, i'll explain that later. sorry, i always order things in the do wrong ...) and also a small dwarf bear which probably wasn't as cuddly as kristina thought he was!

The waterfalls had seven different levels and we'd been told about a pool you could go and sit in at the top and look out across the valley, so off we set, indiana jones style, up the left hand side of the waterfalls. Two hours later, after being feasted on by forty thousand mosquito's, losing sandals in mud, climbing actually up and down the water and rock parts of the waterfalls (and leaving behind quite a bit of skin behind in the process) we decided we should investigate the RIGHT hand side of the waterfalls. On this side was some very handy things called steps, and even a few signs to tell you where to go, albeit in a funny language, but pointy arrows are quite difficult to misunderstand, even for us! Still determined to find this pool we'd been told about we explored a bit further than where the path went, and then found out that the best places to go are beyond the signs that say in three different languages 'Danger, no entry beyond this point!,' we found a huge pool, and loads of places where you could get in behind the waterfalls and look down over all of the levels below, it was quality.

That night we watched one of the england warm up matches (against poland,we scored 6 i think) for euro 2004, it seems a shame that they cancelled the tournament because we were looking quite good ...

from luang prabang we had to get a 'local' bus up to a river in nong khiaw (more silliness in the name department), before we could get a boat to a little village called muang noi (fine, call them whatever you want, i don't care), the local bus turned out to be a bit longer than a pickup, with benches down both sides, and a makeshift tarpaulin roof. a few people got in, then along the way, a few more. it was starting to get crowded now, but we stopped and managed to get a few more people in, then they put three plastic patio chairs in the middle of the benches (god knows how as our legs were all tangled and locked anyway!) and people sat on them. this was now, not very comfy, and guess which three strange white folk were attracting most of the attention? the roads in laos are nothing more than dusty tracks most of the time so we could at least be thankful that it wasn't raining or they'd turn in to huge pothole ridden swamp tracks. it started raining.then we stopped in a very small village where an old lady peered into the back of the pickup (which by now was soaking - i think the tarp used to be some sort of giant tea bag before the driver got hold of it) and the old woman was holding ... a small pig. there was no room in the back for the pig so some helpful locals assisted the woman in tying up the pig's front and back legs whilst it screamed the most earpiercing scream i've ever heard (note it was a scream and not a squeal, squeals i can deal with but this was scary!), and then tying the pig on to the footboard at the back of the pickup. I couldn't see it properly as there was too many people in the way but zimb said it got tied on with his head hanging off of the back and his snout about four inches off of the ground. We set off again (god knows how the woman squeezed in as well, but she did) and bounced off down the road. As it turned out, the potholes in the now quagmire like road were more than four inches deep, and every now and again when we went through a deep one the pigs nose would hit the floor and he'd start screaming again, people shouted, children cried, i tried to get some sleep.

When we unloaded at the other end we counted that we'd had eighteen people in the back of that truck and one very unhappy pig (we saw some other pigs being lifted in to the back of another pickup when we got to the river, and they lifted them in by their ears and tail - glad i'm not a pig), it felt like a benny hill sketch with us all piling out one after the other! We walked down some mud stairs to get our boat past a woman carrying a dead 3 foot lizard by the tail and set off.

There are no roads that go to muang noi so its very quiet and not a lot goes on, the only electricity comes from generators, and only the shops and resteraunts have those, so our rooms (little thatched shacks on the riverbank) were lit by candle, this was kind of handy in a way as it meant you couldn't really see exactly how big the rats were that ran for it every time you came in to your room at night. zimb and kristina had a large packet of crisps in their bag which the rats enjoyed on the first night, but after that the worst that happened was that anything on the shelf in the room got knocked on the floor when they ran past.

As it was clear that the evening entertainment was thin on the ground, we adapted well and spent most evenings sampling the local beer (called beer laos - inventive) and learning to speak the local lingo, we learnt numbers and little phrases which are all now completely forgotten, but saying thank you very much always raised a smile for its singability - cup jai le lai, oh how we sang. (beer laos gets most of the credit for this!)

We hired a guide to go and see some more waterfalls (laos is mostly caves and waterfalls as you might have guessed, all very green and gorgeous) which were nice, and then our guide would take us to see some caves. on the walk back from the waterfalls he disappeared for about 20 mins whilst we were waiting for him on the boat and then came back really quite excited and in a strange mood. he took us to see the caves which were all in water about chest deep and the clay on the ground tried to keep your shoes every step you took, and as he was in such a strange mood, his off key singing and strange noises succeeded in freaking us out a bit! the caves were impressive and the water made them pretty exciting so we decided it had been a top day when we got back. we got chatting to some people at a resteraunt that night and mentioned our guides strange disappearance and then even stranger behaviour, and they said that laos had a bit of an opium problem and this was probably the reason behind our guides freaky behaviour! (it would certainly explain why all of their place names are so silly!)

We then realised we had nearly run out of time and had to spend the next few days covering lots of ground to get to the thai border, this wasn't helped by the new habit of the boat owners and bus station managers who took the money for your tickets, then made you wait around for between about half an hour to an hour before saying 'if you pay extra, we can leave now!' The manager of the bus station actually got quite arsey when we wouldn't pay double the ticket price because the bus wasn't full! after talking to a group of locals with sacks and sacks of farm produce ready to go to market on the same bus as us, he came back and offered us a better price, we realised we were being scammed for the locals tickets (we didn't see any of them hand over any money at all!) but as we were in a hurry, we got the best price we could and got going!

Other fun bits of the journey involved another pick up ride with huge fish and buckets of pungent prawns, an overnight stay in luang nam tha where we all met our first ever agentinian person (luckily a girl so there was no footy related finger wagging), another bus with a young monk being sick all down the side of the bus out of the window, and finally ended with a border crossing back into thailand over the mekong river. The river was only about 100m wide at this point and we probably could have swum if we hadn't had our bags, as it was we took a small wooden motor boat went to the shed that said 'immigration.'

From a resteraunt on the other bank we managed to hire a little air con minibus and sat grinning at the nice smooth tarmac road stretching out in front of us towards chiang mai.

International-tired-and-hence-uninventive-cratey

Wednesday 3 November 2004

ok, i may be 6 months behind with these but ... um ...

After missioning across country for the last couple of days we checked in to a guesthouse in chiang mai and got some much needed sleep after some even more needed showers. Went exploring the following day and found a huge shopping mall where you could even buy built-to-order houses, and even choose the plot on the massive estate where they were going to be built. For some reason the assistants on duty in the 'house shop' didn't descend upon us and give us the hard sell in quite the same way as the other salesmen we've met selling say, dodgy watches, dodgy clothes or prostitutes ... maybe house buyers in thailand don't go shopping in long shorts and sandals. Elsewhere in the same shopping centre we found a whole area set aside for people to rent computers by the hour to play games on (roleplaying adventure type games over there are huge) and another area that was dedicated to individual karaoke booths! through the misted glass you could see plenty of solitary figures or couples stood in a cupboard absolutely going for it at the latest ronan keating song (in thai, but still recognisably awful) or some other tortured cat style wailings - shopping does funny things to people i suppose.

Spent a couple of days just getting used to being in civilisation again, exploring the city, going to the movies even - normal piffle, and then booked on to a 2 day hill tribe trek.

We met up with an english couple, and 4 south african ladies from cape town who were all going on the same trip as us, had half an hour to wander around a market and spot some more skinned pigs faces that were decorated with pigs genitals (mmmm, pleasant) and then set off in to the wilderness. we arrived about 5km east of the middle of nowhere and had some takeaway mystery rice fodder (in very kebab-like polystyrene trays) and then mounted our elephants (easy now) for the start of our trek up to the hill tribe. Zimb took control of our heffalump, straddling his neck and raising his voice an octive or two in the process, and expertly steered 'Dave' through the undergrowth to the bottom of a small stream. Here we dismounted and it started to rain. Not proper rain mind you, oh no, we don't like to do things by halves, proper monsoon pissing it down, still boiling hot and slowly turning the near non-existant path into a quagmire!

We slipped and slid up the vertical mud bath for about the same time it takes to grow a zz top style beard and finally found ourselves at the top of the 'hill' (yeah right!) with some fantastic views down across the valley we'd just climbed. it also chose to stop raining at this point so we all had a bit of a 'moment' - ahh.

We were shown to the little shack where we were all going to stay that night and showered and got changed before they rolled out the local fodder - and cans of beer HOORAY!!

We got to chatting about how difficult it must be to get supplies (ie beer) up this far until one of the south african ladies mentioned she'd been for a wander around the village and found a road with a couple of motorbikes next to some more shacks - PAH! kind of took the shine off the huge effort we'd made to get there, but we certainly had a laugh about it. Another thing we had a small chuckle about was the extrodinary coincidence that one of the south africans (i can't remember names at the minute, but then you wouldn't care anyway, would you?) just so happened to be part owner of the 'Drive SA' company that we sold our ill fated bmw Boris to!! We couldn't believe it! it also turned out that good old boris had only been nicked from outside their offices about a fortnight before she'd left to come away to thailand - what are the chances eh?

Anyway we all got finely messy and our guide the VERY aptly named 'Mr Whisky' kept us entertained with tricks and songs and anecdotes about stupid western tourists. i had to beat a hasty retreat at one point when one of the south african ladies was making a very direct line between there being no eligable bachelors in cape town (4 women to every straight man so she reckoned) and the bonuses of marrying someone with a uk passport. it really helps with work permits abroad and quite a lot of people are actually paying brits to marry them and then........ZIMB! HEEEELP, ZIIIIMB!!!

Anyway i escaped and we woke the next morning with slightly fuzzy heads and made our way through a cornfield with no recognisable path whatsoever down to a nice little waterfall where we had a bit of a dip and woke ourselves up and felt vaguely human again. We went on a little white water rafting section of a river where we completely soaked one of the other rafts we caught up with and then ran (or rowed) away laughing (yes, big AND clever i think you'll find) and then caught a pickup back to the hotel.

That night we got a night bus back to bangkok where i was sat next to a half german half american bloke who turned out to be a bayern munich fan ... all things considered we got on really really well and he informed us (how could we have forgotten!!) that the european championships (football, i know it was a while ago now!) started that night!!

We managed to catch glimpses of the first match when we stopped at a service station and when we arrived at 4am on ko sahn road the place was absolutely heaving and alive with drunken footy fans - these next few days were going to be interesting ...

we booked into a hotel right next door to the biggest pub on ko sahn road (the main backpackers street in bangkok, crawling with bootleg market stalls, dodgy ripped off clothes, cds, dvds, watches, id's, pretty much anything and of course OODLES of 24hour pubs. We had over a week to wait here for jenny to turn up and then for Ann to arrive: things don't get much better!

Bearing in mind two or three matches were on every night between 11pm and 4am, the next few days blur into a multinational beer fest. we met new friends from all over not only europe but also the world as they supported either home or adopted teams, and had a few light ales to help the situation along. One person who deserves a special mention was Karsten, a danish foghorn who was NEVER sober and we could hear him in the pub from our hotel next door shouting "WE LOOOOVE YOU DEEENMARK, WE DOOOOOO' at all hours and still going at breakfast - zimb formed a particularly special bond with him and reckons he's probably still there now.

Anyway, jen arrived and was (and still is) on fine form. she brought a copy of the bridport news with her which seemed VERY strange, and then it was the day that Ann was due to arrive. My god i've never been so nervous in all of my life! We hadn't seen each other for 7 months and i can't even begin to explain how i was feeling, the day sort of passed in a blur as i tried to keep busy and finally set off for the airport to meet her, the bus there took about sixteen days and when i got to the airport i realised that there were two different exits she could come through that were miles apart from each other, nice organisation there cratey!

As all of the people who had come with me on the bus slowly met their friends and family, exchanged hugs, kisses and went on their way, i waited, and waited and got a bit more nervous, and then some more. finally there was just me and one other guy from my bus waiting at the arrivals gate, giving each other dodgy looks like 'i don't want to be the last one here!' �until finally: HURRAH, i'd got the right gate and Ann arrived! Cue the slow motion, soft focus camera work and crescendo of music, etc etc, i'll skip you the details.

We went outside and saw the HUUUGE queue for the taxi rank and i looked at my watch (zimb, jen and kristina had been waiting for a couple of hours already (in the pub, of course) and if we waited an hour for a cab, then another hour for the ride back they were going to be blotto - hence i come up with a cunning plan. There are many buses mulling around that are going god knows where, so all we have to do is get on a random bus, get out of the airport and then get off and flag down a cab, therefore skipping the queue, BRILLIANT! (hmmm)

So we got on a bus, got out of the airport (going well so far isn't it?) and then the bus gets on a flyover about 60 feet above anything except motorway. and stays there.

Shit, right, welcome to thailand hun. yeah of course i know where we're going (!!!????!!) i try and play it cool for a while and keep chatting until i finally have to go and ask the lady who took our tickets where we're going, she looks at me a bit funny and decides to ignore me, fair enough i suppose. then finally i breathe a huge sigh of relief as we descend in to some outer city suburb and i ring the bell like a lunatic until the driver lets us out because the noise is doing his head in. phew, we get a cab and get back to the hotel and meet up with the others.All under control ...

More drunken tomfoolery ensues with england umm, winning all of their games (beer goggles can be great sometimes) and we go and see some live bands, ollie returns from ko tao and we make plans to go and see the royal palace before leaving the following day.

As we go to see the royal palace though, there's some big do going on outside, a couple of people tell us it's closed for the day, but we ignore them as they look a bit shady. then a well dressed chap catches sight of our guide book and introduces himself as working for the thai tourist industry, even shows us his government ID, asks us how we're enjoying our stay, where we're going, what we've seen and what we want to see. we're chatting to him for a while and it turns out he's works for a newspaper too and unfortunately the palace is closed for the induction of some new monks (which is the big do we can see going on). anyway he takes our guide book and shows us a little tour we can do of a golden buddha, some other sights and when we get back at 4:30 the palace will be open, even writes all of the places down on the map in our guide book for us, what a nice chap!

So he hails two tuk tuk drivers and waffles at them in thai to get us a good deal (and for a days tour, it actually was a really good deal) so off we go. the first place we look around is really nice, very ornate and decorative, we take a few photos and as we're waiting in the tuk tuks for one of the drivers who's in the toilet a man is stood idly around and starts chatting to us. where are you from, where are you going etc, we tell him about the tour and he asks to see our map as he's new in bangkok and doesn't really know where we're off to ... hmm ... then he sees the guys writing and says he's heard of one of the temples and it's really nice, then he spots something else the guy has written and starts getting really excited, 'oh, this factory outlet he's said to visit has been on the tv today,' he says, 'they make armani suits and ship them over to italy, they're SO cheap to make here and you can get them at factory prices, AND its the last day of the promotional sale today.' ... theres a strange smell arising here somewhere ... 'you guys could make lots of money here, if you buy 3 or 4 suits on your credit card, you can sell them at home for three or four times the price.' ... hang on, is it cow ... no, wait, i recognise it, its BULLSHIT!!! this was the most well constructed scam i've ever seen, i've even spared you some details, but basically the plan was to get us in to a tailors and give us the hard sell, the tuk tuk drivers get a fuel coupon for delivering us there and we get fleeced. oh no you don't. We told the tuk tuk drivers the game was up and they played dumb, we said we weren't going in to any tailors, they said please, if you don't we don't get our fuel coupon, but we stood firm and told them we'd already paid for our tour and could they take us to the golden buddha. it got slightly arsey, but we thought they'd caved. then they stopped by some big wrought iron gates and said, 'in there, golden buddah that way' so out we get and go through these gates only to find its a flipping schoolyard and as we realise and turn around we see them speeding off in to the distance!! BASTARDS! So we made our apologies and left the school, got a cab back to the grand palace which WAS open after all, got in there about half an hour before it was closing and did a whistle stop tour. What a stitch up! but fair play to them: creative doesn't even begin to explain it!

The next day we set off for a place called Kanchanaburi about 3 hours west of bangkok where the actual bridge over the river kwai is. we stayed in a great little custom backpackers village called little creek and from there we organised a trip to the tiger temple (the photo i sent about god knows how long ago!) where what basically happens is ... some very rich thai families believe that to own a cute little tiger cub is a great symbol of wealth and status, but said cute little tiger soon grows up and becomes uncontrollable big strong beast: problem. As the tiger has been raised by humans it can no longer be released into the wild, so the local monastery in kanchanaburi takes them and looks after them in a huge nearby quarry, through sponsorship and donations (don't run away, i'm not after any cash!!) and the money they get from tourists and their cameras, they keep the tigers and try to look after them as best they can. The tigers are alive and awake (as quite a few of you asked!), but whilst you poo your pants and get your photos done they are given some kind of sweet type food to eat so they're more interested in eating that than eating you! They're pretty tame by the look of it though as they are made to move around by squirting them with bottles of water, i wouldn't want to be around when they lost their temper, mind you!! There was a disclaimer that you had to sign before you went to see them and also some rather worrying photos of one of the monks with a LARGE bandage on his ribcage in the brochures, but all in all it was a pretty amazing place.

The next day we hired scooters and went to see a huge seven tier waterfall before getting hideously lost on the way home and nearly running out of petrol. then we signed up to a trip where you go elephant trekking and then get to go into the water with them afterwards and actually bath them which was quality. the last day in kanchanaburi we looked around the river kwai museum, walked over the bridge as a VERY slow train came over it and rounded the day off with an iced coffee which i really enjoyed until ann pointed out that halfway down the ice in the now empty glass was a big fat cockroach - i retched a fair deal as you can imagine.

We got mightily drunk and watched england crash out of the european championships in only the way they know how before heading south towards the beaches and islands preparing for the coming full moon parties.

International Cratey