Birthdaychristmas

My birthday was just another birthday until Grumbles the elephant came to say hello. I’d had to work during the day and then gone for some food, then on to a bar. The elephant which everyone else simply calls ‘the elephant’ is usually paraded around near the pier where most of the tourists are, but for some reason on that night he had been led to the centre of town and it gave me a suitably exotic birthday surprise when I turned around and saw him neatly filling up the large entrance way to the bar. I’ve taken to calling him Grumbles, he deserves a name and Grumbles is quite fitting.

Christmas was not just like any other Christmas. It was weird, very weird. We were asked to perform for ten minutes at one of the high schools as part of their morning Christmas party. As I’ve discovered, Thailand doesn’t really care about Christmas but any excuse to put on an elaborate show with dodgy technical problems is too much for them to resist. So we decided we’d just make fools of ourselves and sing some Christmas songs. Obviously we would start with Jingle Bells – they all love Jingle Bells in Thailand, I’ve almost forgotten if there are any other carols. Then some bright spark had the idea of doing the Twelve Days of Christmas and between the four of us we could make twelve posters for some students to hold up as we sing it. So my Christmas Eve this year was me splayed out on my living room floor in a jungle of colouring crayons, frantically trying to remember what hens look like. And eleven pipers piping! ELEVEN!? I was so proud when I managed to draw a piper piping but to do it another ten times! To keep myself amused I added variety – fat pipers, midget pipers, stoned-looking jazz pipers etc. I also did seven swans a-swimming and they looked more like white-feathered eels. Suffice to say I was scribbling away until 2am and made Santa very angry indeed.

When we turned up at the school we went into a massive hall and the party was already in full swing. An audience of about 400 kids was watching the current act – eight skinny, promiscuous 15-year-old girls and gays in skimpy Santa outfits were simulating sex on the stage and occasionally doing a kind of ‘electric shock’ dance along to Jingle Bells (of course). It must happen about once a week, that feeling of ‘what the fuck am I doing here?’

Then we went on and did our stuff. Inevitably our backing music wouldn’t work and there was only one microphone. The school already had a karaoke version of Jingle Bells at the ready, which we sang along to atrociously badly, Shaun taking the lead because tone-deaf or not, he is the head teacher. Then somehow I ended up singing solo a-cappella for the Twelve Days of Christmas while Claire choreographed the holding up of our ridiculous posters, and Brandon and Shaun went around throwing sweets at the kids. I started singing and a massive X-factor style scream went up around the room – I felt like I was flying, I was Susan Boyle and everything was going to be alright for the rest of my life. No more sitting at home alone dwelling over awkward social moments from five years ago, no more nightmares of mutant orphans stealing my thoughts as I sleep, I’d broken America, I was high on the acid of self-love, I’d dreamed a dream and the dream was me on a stage in Thailand singing Christmas songs to a few hundred pubescent students. But you don’t need me to mention that The Twelve Days of Christmas is a long, drawn out affair with far too many repetitions and a patronisingly obvious conclusion. When I finally finished I received a pitter-patter of dissenting applause from the fickle crowd and my Susan Boyle career was over.

Later in the day I was a very sweaty Santa Claus at the kindergarten that some of the girls teach at. Then I had to teach for 2 hours, then mark 39 exam papers. Merry Christmas.

A Krabi weekend

Making friends with Thai people in a place like Krabi is futile because they’re all trying to sell you sex or boat trips.

Everyone else is German. I’ve got nothing against that per se, but it’s harder to break into a friendship group when they’re all talking a stupid language.

Perhaps I was unlucky that my plan of ‘oh I know I’ll go to Krabi by myself and just see what happens’ didn’t quite work out. Perhaps it’s my fault for being rubbish at planning anything that on the Saturday I just went to Krabi Town and then realised that Krabi town is nowhere near the beach. I spent the night in the sort of rat-infested small hotel you see in films, where you can tell the Hollywood set-designers have been having a field day scrubbing away with light brown paints and rust-coloured stick-ons to give it that incredible authentic shit-hole look.

Spontaneity usually makes for an adventure and I suppose this was no exception, but my mistake is that I had in my mind exactly the sort of spontaneous adventure I wanted; it would involve travelling Irish girls, naïve Americans, and drunk friendly guys from Sheffield, more than happy to invite a quirky posh southerner into their midst. But no, didn’t see any of them. Maybe there was a whole clan of these people circulating all the bars in the opposite direction to me, having the time of their lives; while in contrast I was moping around, a decadent loner with one broken flip flop, getting increasingly agitated at the circling vultures (prostitutes, beach sellers, tailors. Why are there so many fucking tailors in Krabi!? I don’t want a suit, leave me alone). I suppose I never expected this whole year to be one big orgasmic adventure in paradise, there will be troughs. Last weekend was a bit of a trough.

Conversations & attempted friendships
1. I was buying beach shorts from a Burmese guy.
“Where you from?”
“England.”
“Where?”
“ENGLAND”,
“Where in England? Manchester?”
“Um…west…Bath…near Bristol…”
“Manchester?”
“West. South west.”
“Manchester?”
“Yes. Manchester.”

2. I was sat reading on the beach as the sun was going down and two girls who didn’t look particularly Thai walked past taking photos of each other. Japanese tourists? They could be fun. They waved at me and I waved back.
They turned out to be Thai prostitutes. But one of them told me a good place to see monkeys in the morning. Everyone you meet has something to tell you. That’s philosophy.

3. I sat at a bar watching football while a bar girl called Nikha drew on my face with her biro and told me I’m uglier than Cristiano Ronaldo. She was funny and rude, which made me trust her as she didn’t seem like a prostitute. We had something that resembled a real conversation; correctly guessed each other’s age, talked about teaching, she talked about her boyfriend and her family and her mouth ulcer, how she’s from Bangkok originally.
It turned out Nikha was merely someone whose job it is to keep guys sweet until the horde of prostitutes arrives. Our genuine friendship felt a little less genuine when I realised this.
“Look, sexy ladies. You want sexy lady for when you go sleep?”
“No”. I was sullen. “I don’t like those sexy ladies.”
“Why? You gay?”
“Not gay, picky.”
“Whas picky?”
“No no no no no no…YES.“
“Oh.”

3. Chelsea fan in an Irish pub. Friendly twat.

4. I bought an oil painting from a deaf Thai lady. She typed 750 into a calculator. I pulled a face that said ‘I don’t want to spend that much’. She gave me the calculator and I typed 250 and she put her thumb up to say ok. Deaf people haggle faster.

5. I had been walking home to my hotel, drunkenly looking at the stars and feeling disillusioned by all the debauchery that ruins Thailand. Then a girl went past on a motorbike, then slowed. She started tossing her hair, arching her back etc etc etc. I looked the other way. She stopped the motorbike ahead of me and sat on some steps waiting. By this stage I was boiling into a drunken rage at the hollowness of everything and when I realised it was a ladyboy I just felt even angrier.
I don’t remember the exact conversation. I wasn’t very nice.

Bangkok

Now I know where Santa goes for his holidays before the busy part of his year. You can guess already can’t you; of course! he goes to the strip bars in Bangkok. Why wouldn’t he? You would if you were him. There he was, sat all alone on a stool next to the table of dancing girls, occasionally reaching out and attempting to grope one of them. His face was all cheery and red and his long white hair neatly trimmed. Obviously he wasn’t wearing the red Coca Cola costume, he was on holiday! But I knew it was him and on our way out I went up and asked if I can have a bike this year. “Oh ho ho yes!” he gleamed, happily playing along with my rubbish joke.

Bangkok seems like a direct cross between London, Amsterdam and Hong Kong. Amsterdam I’ve always found kind of seedy in a quirky and ridiculous way, but Bangkok is like its intimidating older brother.

Typically, I don’t really remember what we did on our twelve-hour drinking adventure. All I know is that despite going to some really dodgy places nothing very dodgy happened. We had some thoroughly entertaining tuk tuk rides; it seems to be fashionable in Bangkok to intermittently rev the engine in a crazy manner whilst staring behind at the passengers and cackling. And the drivers all seemed determined to hook each of us up with a prostitute, and seemed confused and distraught when we kept saying no.



Much as it was a fun weekend, I'm so glad I don't live and work in Bangkok, I'd be destroyed.

The next day we were atrociously hung over and tried to keep our heads low, but then I led everyone off down some side streets and found a random fairground. The thing that took my fancy was 'throw the ball at the target so the girl falls in the slime' or whatever you would call it. Brandon had a shot and it bounced tamely away. “I think you need to throw it harder” he said as I picked up the next ball. So I absolutely launched it and it hit the edge of the target, ricocheted upwards and smashed a massive lantern overhead, shards of glass spraying over everyone, girls screaming, Thai faces glaring at me. It was funny because no one died.

We took a night train home (after flying up there) and it was full of the sorts of hazards I’ve come to expect from Thai health and safety. I was convinced that either I would sleepwalk out of one of the open doorways into the dark, menacing blur outside, or that the juddering train would eventually rock itself clean off the tracks. Didn’t sleep a wink.

Lust in translation

A new member of the Thai staff at the school, a girl called Fa, asked me the other day if I like ‘lice’ (she meant rice). I said yes. Then there was an uncomfortable silence and I suddenly realised ‘oh, she means now!’ So I stood up and started following and realised that all the Thai staff were going for lunch and as I was the only teacher in the office presumably they thought they’d better be polite and ask me to come along. But as I made my way outside Fa had a phone call and then everything got confusing. With her bad English and my even worse Thai I couldn’t really understand but she said something like “sorry, farther, tomorrow” so I said “you’re going further? Ok, never mind” and went and got some food by myself.

Then at the same time the next day she came up and fetched me from the office. A tuk-tuk was waiting outside, which I thought was odd because tuk-tuks are never there when you need them, but always aggressively hoot at you when you’re happy walking. Anyway, I got in and we were whisked away and then she explained the tuk-tuk was being driven by her father. Ahh, father not farther. Through the small window to the driver’s seat I could make out a powerful looking man with a long ponytail. Fa and I chatted clumsily in the back of the tuk-tuk and she kept putting her hands on my arm. After what seemed like a bit too long, perhaps about 3-4 miles, we turned up at a restaurant I’d never been to before, with buffet food from disgusting-looking giant bowls. I slowly realised that her father wasn’t just driving us; the three of us went inside together to get food. Fa dragged me by the hand and pointed at all the different foods and tried, bless her, to explain what they were but I ended up just guessing and when I sat down I realised everything on my plate was its own unique shade of green.

Conversation was minimal and awkward so I did my best to instigate some chitchat. I tried, partly using gesture to ask Fa how long she had lived in Suratthani and she responded by showing me her wristwatch. Then, making polite conversation, I tried to ask whereabouts she lives and she started fanning my face. Meanwhile her father just sat there silently eating lots of food, occasionally grunting approval at just about everything, whether he understood it or not.

My brain was ticking over trying to remember as much Thai as possible. Fa asked if I wanted “chaa yen” and I pulled a confused expression before remembering that that means “ice tea”, which normally I don’t like but I was so excited at understanding something that I said yes anyway. Then the woman who had served the food said “arooy mai?” to me and I know that “arooy” means delicious and “mai” is a word Thai people use to turn anything into a question, so that wasn’t too hard to work out. “Arooy!” I said, patting my stomach.

Fa and her father paid for me despite my protests and I got whisked back to the school in the noisy tuk-tuk, this time with Fa sitting in the passenger seat next to her father, me in the back by myself trying to work out what was happening. Did I just have a date? Is that what happened? Did I agree to it? Did I enjoy it? I don’t know. I just don’t know. In all the confusion I hadn’t even considered whether Fa is attractive or not. I still don’t have an answer for that and it seems strangely irrelevant. I’ve barely seen her in the two days since and as long as I don’t do anything stupid like invite her out for dinner to return the favour, then the whole thing might be forgotten within a couple of weeks.

Quantum of Sausage

Things I don’t miss:

Helphire plc.
Freezing cold mornings in the dark.
The general feeling of an underlying angry tension.
The heavy bready fatty diet.
Chavs (and their heavier breadier fattyererer diets).
The certainty that you are being charged silly money for the most trivial things by companies/people that don’t really need it.
British transport.
Over-zealous health & safety precautions.
The claustrophobic sensation of being watched.
Monotony.
Moaning.
McDonalds etc.
Myself with pale skin, cracked lips and broken dreams.


Things I do miss:

Red wine.
Cheese.
Sausages.

Khanom beach

Just had an amazing weekend away at Khanom, the nearest nice beach to Suratthani. It’s a beautiful quiet beach, with perfect sand scattered with thousands of seashells. It was really chilled out, especially on Sunday-Monday (which are the days we get off as a weekend). We pretty much had the beach to ourselves, other than the people working at the resorts and their kids, who kept us very entertained. A young, tiny Thai boy aged about six kept wandering around aimlessly with a massive adult-size bike – the seat was higher off the ground than his head. Seemed like every time we went round a corner he’d be there in the distance somewhere, just pushing this bicycle around, like some kind of humorous sub-plot.

I took my guitar and we sang some cheesy songs on the beach, talked rubbish and got drunk. Also went to a cool bar at one point and the girl who owned it (apparently a survivor of the tsunami) had been in a recent motorbike accident and served all our food and drinks by hopping on one foot, laughing all the while.

Can’t believe it’s December now. The sea was incredible, warm and lush. Went in at night under the near-full moon and stars, swimming in the shimmering phosphorescence. Jealous yet? In the darkness I saw a huge jellyfish-shaped beast though and had to flee abruptly.

Talking of beasts, rather than just sit around on a beach the whole time we went on an adventure to find Khao Wang Thong Cave. It’s a kind of tourist destination in that there were signs from the main road, but we quickly became lost in a labyrinth of eerie, dusty back roads and had to ask no less than five different people for directions.
I said something about it being like the start of one of those horror films – next we’ll get a flat tyre and won’t be able to escape the cave-dwelling beasts. “And you’re the funny one, so you die first”, Brandon told me, which had perhaps the wrong effect of making me swell with pride.

Glad we made it there anyway, it was amazing. A whole complex of caves in the side of a mountain – and like I said it’s not really a touristy place, we were the only people there and had to clamber through a tiny rusty gate 4ft off the ground and turn the lights on and off ourselves. It was pretty creepy inside, descending into darkness only broken by the sparse little lights in some of the corners. We had to crawl on hands and knees at some points and there were about ten or so different chambers, all different shapes and sizes, water dripping from the stalactites and bats flapping around in pandemonium. F**king cool.

Jon is in Wonderland

I haven't even left Suratthani for the last few weeks now. One day, at the weekend I just cycled on my magic yellow bike and went in a direction I'd never been before and found all sorts of crazy markets and things. I was looking round one market which had all sorts of fascinating plants and carvings and whatnot.

And one stall had all these small cages with funny little rabbits in. Except they weren't rabbits, they were too small and their ears were too short. Perhaps some kind of guinea pig? Except they didn't look anything like guinea pigs, really. Whilst stood there watching them and contemplating what sort of animal they might be, I realised that they were moving in a really awkward way; kind of mechanical and clunky. Robot-bunny-pigs?

But some of them were sat by the edge of the cage sniffing furiously, some were lying down and looked kind of dead but were breathing slightly and some of them were eating corn on the cob - as far as I could tell, actually eating it. They all seemed to know their bearings and never bumped into the edge of the cage and their movements, whilst kind of mechanised were random enough to make it look passable as real life.

So I looked closely at their fur and it looked real enough; white and fluffy and not too perfectly symmetrical. Then suddenly what really caught my eye was something I'd perhaps subconsciously tried not to notice, that they were each wearing little colourful jackets with a sort of traditional Asian patterned style.

If I could speak enough Thai I would have been able to ask the seller what the hell these things actually were, but instead I frowned and shook my head and stumbled away feeling a bit sick.

Later that evening I made the mistake of telling some of my friends and colleagues about the weird creatures, hoping they might be able to shed some light.

"Jon, are you ok? Did you go a bit funny in the heat?"
"Seriously, I promise you, they were there and they were eating corn on the cob and moving like this..." (demonstrates) "...and they were each wearing these little colourful jackets..."
"And did one of them invite you for a tea party?"

As luck would have it I was saved when we went for food later and a Canadian girl called Avalon turned up and after exchanging pleasantries told everyone "Hey, I saw the weirdest thing at a market earlier, there were all these little rabbit things in cages, except they weren't rabbits, they were more like..." etc etc.

Phew.

The monolith

A Thai family of four, crammed onto one motorbike pull up and park next to a food stall and after a quick 'sawa di krab' to the noodle lady, the man orders some food. Already this feels as familiar to me as a red-faced farmer stumbling into a pub and asking for a pint of Old Speckled Hen. Can't believe I've only been in Thailand for one month, it feels like about six!

I've just reached the point where I feel like I really know my way around. I already have my favourite bars - one where the owner Eb always pulls out a special armchair and steals someone else's table for me to put at the front by the big screen for the football. And GM bar which is basically as if someone has uprooted the Porter Cellar bar in Bath and plonked it into the centre of Suratthani, decorated with plants and tropical fish. They have acoustic music there and sometimes freestyle jamming sessions.

Teaching is up and down and round and round. The high school class of 39 students were really rude and obnoxious last Tuesday, but then eager and rather funny two days later. My previous favourite class of younglings, the Sharks, now has two new boys who are only interested in being ninjas and it's disrupting everything.

But one thing that went well was when I brought my guitar into the Sharks lesson for the first time last week. I hadn't expected the kids to be quite so excited about it - a massive cheer went up just when I got the thing out of its case! The next challenge though is going to be getting the buggers to actually sit down and sing ABC, rather than jumping around, theatrically squawking and reaching out at the guitar as if it's the monolith from 2001 - a space odyssey.

Work.

HELP!! I'm under siege from an army of beautiful girls. They're quite literally fighting for my affection and at the moment Grace is probably winning. She's totally crazy - with manic eyes and a cheeky, toothless grin. Yesterday I saw her whispering something in Thai to Kiki which must have been a secret arrangement along the lines of "you can sit with him for two minutes, but when I come back you have to move it". And Lucienne is warming to me more and more, ever since I sang ABC in a ridiculous high-pitched voice whilst trilling my lips. But my personal favourite student is Sei-Mai. She's incredible. All the other kids say things like "to-day-is-Thurs-day" and then Sei-Mai, the youngest at only 5-years-old says "Thursday 5 November November November!! Two...Two Thousand Nine! Hee hee hee! I feel hungry and tired and super!" Then she points at my arm hair and says "haha, monkey". I respond "hairy" and she mouths the word over a few times and then uses it constantly throughout the lesson. Like the raptors in Jurassic Park, you can see her working things out.

That group is called The Sharks, one of the younger classes at the private language school I'm employed by. There are ten students and most of them are excitable, confident young girls who seem to find me hilarious. I never thought I'd want to teach young kids, but it's absolutely amazing so far. I also teach The Squids who are about 11 years old and a very high level, they're a cool class too. It's not all easy though, I also teach at two high schools - at one I have a large class size of 39 students (but they are impeccably well-behaved and polite). And at the other high school I have a class of 25 absolute little shits. It seems to be a school where students go when they've been kicked out of every other school in the city. The worst student is a boy called Boom.

All good experience I'm sure, and no matter what happens there, I always have the sharks at the end of the day from 5:30 - 6:30.
So my day ends with me walking down the staircase with Kiki. "Kiki, how many steps?" And she jumps down each one, excitedly counting in her squeaky voice "ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!..." etc etc all the way to "TWENTY-EIGHT! TWENTY-NINE! THIRTY!!...umm...umm...e-...eleven?"

Yes Kiki, very good.

SNAKE!!

I've just had the 'snake in the house' initiation.

That's what I just sent as a message to my friend Andrea, trying to be as nonchalant as possible because I assumed it's the sort of thing that just happens. But her reply was "Are you bloody serious? Wholly crap! Never has happened to me. Scary!"

I think it was more scared of me than I was of it. But it's kind of hard to tell, it was fairly expressionless. I was just walking down the stairs and saw this little face looking at me from behind the cupboard. Cheeky bugger, it was only a little thing and was wrapped around a plastic kitchen trolley type thing, so once I felt sure that the snake wasn't going to launch itself at high speed towards my face, I just moved the whole trolley outside and Snakey-Geoff slithered away.

I should probably get something better to cover the window.

Kayak pig

Well, I've been away from home for a week and already I've met a ladyboy, bumped into a girl I know from Bath, been snorkelling, kayaking, skinny dipping, possibly secured a place to do some gigs, got sun tanned without getting burnt, learnt how to speak enough Thai to order in bars and say hello, thank you etc.

I've been hanging out mostly with 3 Americans and they're actually alright! They have passports obviously which is a good start, and they say football instead of soooccerrrr and don't drink coke or believe in advertising. I've taught them words like mincing, pants (for underwear/terrible), to get on one's tits, cotton buds (instead of Q-tips). There were also several lovely Europeans who were with us for a bit but they've all gone now. They were fun, but I didn't give a great first impression when I turned up for the snorkelling with an English breakfast and a beer. They all knew instantly where I was from.

I'm on Koh Phangan now and it is absolutely beautiful. We've come to a slightly more secluded resort area and it's low season so it's quiet (it's supposed to be raining all the time, but it's not actually raining at all).

I do have to start working soon though, so no beach holidays for a while, but living in crazy Surat is bound to be interesting. Just by sitting in a restaurant you see crazy things - a truck pulls up and then uses a small crane to lift a cage full of pigs, then dumps all the pigs into another truck from rather too high up and you hear them all going 'wheeeeeeee' as they land in a cacophony of pig.

Koh Samui

Koh Samui seems to be a once-beautiful island now full of honeymooning chavs and middle-aged sex-tourists in Hawaiian shirts.

I was quite disappointed I have to say. I actually have to start work in a few days so want to fit in as much random fun as possible.

Then I met a bunch of Thai girls in one of the crass bars. A rather bullish, strong-faced girl called Wow asked me to play pool. My, what precise skills and spacial awareness she had. She thrashed me.

She said she would take me on a tour of the island if I wanted. Her friends said "Be careful, she crazy!" with sincere, furrowed brows. So I said yes anyway, can't resist an adventure. Wow seemed a bit odd and certainly not what you would call attractive, but friendly and genuine enough so why not?

So Wow took me on a motorbike (and she really knew how to ride that motorbike). Wow spoke confidently and at great length with very impressive English vocabulary but the most abysmal accent I can imagine, so I didn't understand a word and there were countless uncomfortable silences. "You so quiet, you kind of guy only have friends on Fessbook".

But Wow and I went to the Big Buddha, struck the bells around the perimeter with a kind of Buddhist baseball bat for good luck, visited several other shrines and fed the giant fish in the surrounding ponds. We saw the Grandfather and Grandmother rock formations (which look like genitals, Wow found this really funny even though she'd seen them countless times), we climbed a stunning waterfall - "I no afraid to climb, sometimes I more like a man".
We went for some beers on Chaweng beach and watched the incredible sunset. Wow became sullen and asked me strange questions about my sexual tastes. A beach-seller saved me from having to answer by putting a monkey in my lap.

Wow took me home to my hotel when I told her I was too tired. I promised to come and find her the next day to go partying, but I could tell by the look in her eyes that she could tell from the look in my eyes that that was never going to happen. My stupid, honest eyes.

Life throws up situations where you have to ask, will I learn more about myself sat on a beach reading Ulysses or riding around on the back of a motorbike with a ladyboy? I made my choice and I stick by it.

It was eventful but thankfully not in a sexual way. I legged it to Koh Tao the next day which is far more my cup of tea. Did some snorkelling with a terrible hangover yesterday. Paradise.

Fight!!

And the plane crashed into the dark, angry sea and I was the only survivor because I was in the back row of the plane and jumped out before the water submerged absolutely everything. That was my silly premonition, so imagine my horror when in real life I handed in my boarding pass and the lady said "We've had to change your seat to one at the very back of the plane, I hope that's ok for you?"
The plane obviously didn't crash though did it, stupid plane.
But the good thing is i didn't miss any flights!!!! I must be maturing.
So I got picked up from the airport, shown to my house which on first inspection looked very bare but actually is perfectly beautiful, I just need to jazz it up with some of them colourful thingys that girls drape over walls and stuff. I've had a fight with a lizard and a millipede or something so far but no real horror. I don't have a TV or any new-fangled things like internets or cooking equipment but it's all absolutely fine because everything is everywhere all the time.

Apart from going to the school and looking around, I've basically been on a whirlwind of adventures riding a bike or getting tuk-tuks around the city, eating amazing food, drinking Singha, looking at markets, trying to communicate, getting giggled at and feeling silly.

Best thing so far was on the way back from a restaurant last night with 2 of the other teachers Shaun and Erica we noticed something big happening and realised it was a Muay Thai (kick-boxing) tournament - we haggled over the cost to get in because it was already half-way through but somehow we ended up getting in as VIPs and sitting right next to the ring with all the local politicians and powerful types - partly because we're 'farang' (white westerners) I suppose. Anyway, it was amazing, it was mostly teenage guys fighting and it was really intense, with a kind of house-band playing the most excruciating music during the fights which sounded something like some asian druids playing bagpipes. On one side of the crowd was what in football terms you would call 'the Kop' - lots of local chaps who were so into it was almost quite scary. They were all gambling on the winner of each fight too, which apparantly is highly illegal. But weirdly no one was drinking - I went to order some beer at one point and basically cleaned them out of all 2 they had. I asked Shaun and Erica if these fighting events happen all the time and they said no not at all, maybe on the island Ko Samui but not here in Surat, and they don't know anyone who's got in as a VIP before. Just what I thought, I'm a jammy bugger.

Visas, pies and cider

Still in England, still don't have a visa, still stuffing my face full of lovely bad English food before I leave. Still haven't packed anything.

The visa is the main worry at the moment, I knew it would be difficult and those bloody Embassterds aren't very helpful - been to the Thai Embassy in London twice now and they've been pretty pointless journeys, other than going out drinking cider etc with various London people before/afterwards. I'm sure I'll get it sorted at the very last possible minute like everything else I ever do, ever.

Talking of ever, this is the first blog of my whole life. HOW EXCITING. I seem like the sort of person who would keep a blog but I never have done before. Well, here's one. I'm going to try to avoid txt-speak, frivolous exclamation marks, jokes, exaggerated stories and watery-eyed introspection. So hopefully it should be pretty truthful but funny all the same and insightful without being too gay.