I'm in my 14th country (if you count Tanzania and Qatar)

Hi everyone.

I'm in Malaysia after a horrible journey yesterday, but more on that later.

Trat picked up a little bit as I found a night market and ate loads of food, then I found a bar that had a westerner in it. He was German and 41 years old, and he had a Thai girlfriend that was 22... She wasn't at the bar, and I didn't question whether she had been purchased or not. I went on to Koh Mak the day after. Koh Mak was very quiet, it's a small island anyway, and being low season there was practically no one there. Some of the beaches were fantastic, with no one on them at all. I did meet a guy who owned one of the resorts there, it was closed because it was low season, and he was also a carpenter so during low season he did work for other people opening resorts on the island, not a bad life. We got talking about what i'm going to do in the future, and his only suggestion was get 5 million pounds and be a philanthropist, conveniently not metioniong any set the wheels in motion for that career path.

I stayed on Koh Mak for 3 nights, but it was too quiet, so I headed back to Bangkok to get my passport back complete with india visa, and then planned to take Jens' advice and head down to Ton Sai. I spent two nights in Bangkok I think, I don't really like Bangkok, I just wandered around temples and parks during the day, and went to bars at night. There was a good bar on Khao San Road that was up a few flights of stairs, so you could look down and watch people get hassled for suits and massages and be glad that you're not one of them. I met a few people, but no one really of any interest, and I think I had the shortest conversation with a fellow traveller that I have initiated so far, with a german girl, she just gave one word answers, I tried three times to make it flow, then gave up and turned to the English people on my other side and started talking to them instead.

The bus was an overnight bus to Krabi, then I had to get a boat to Ton Sai bay. The bus had a television and they put the film "Jumper" on. It was in English, with English subtitles, which didn't say anything like what the people were saying. It was funniest when the actors were just saying single words or phrases, "First Class" was translated from English, to English and writen in the subtitles as "Donkey". There was a point when someone said a drink, it could have been Martini, I can't remember, but it was written in the subtitles as "vegetarian food".

When I got to Ton Sai I was really tired, so I found somewhere to stay, got some food, then had a nap. When I woke up I went and sat by the beach, two guys were playing frisbee, not sure enough in my frisbee skills I didn't ask to play, but I went to speak to them when they went to the bar afterwards. They were Americans, and called Miles and Jordan, they had met on the bus on the way to Krabi, Miles was traveling alone, and Jordan with his girlfriend Lisa, who was having a nap. A while later, Lisa showed up, angry because Jordan had locked her in their hut and she had been shouting for ages for someone to come and let her out but it was just Thai people walking past so they couldn't understand her. After a while we moved from the hostel bar and went to a bar called Small World Bar. I think you'll probably remember it if you went there Jens, really chilled out and a lot of fun, free table tennis. After that we struggled to get home in the dark, at one point Miles suggested that we turn the torch off and we'd adjust to the light, it didn't work.

We spent the next day together on the beach, plus we went over to Railey beach when the tide went out, it had nicer sand, but it didn't have the same atmosphere over there. At night we went to Small World bar again, after getting food from a place I don't know the name of, but was really good.

Miles left the next morning for Koh phi phi, while Jordan, Lisa and I rented Kayaks and set off on an 8Km journey to an island we could see in the distance. It took about an hour and a half, but it was beautiful and it was kind of cool pulling up in a canoe when everyone else there had come on organised tours in big boats. I rested for a while then carried on to another island that took around 30 mins to get to. When we got back we ate lots of food and had an early night.

When I awoke, feeling the ache of the previous days adventure I did nothing and just lounged around on the beach all day, meeting Jordan and Lisa for a few drinks on the porch of their bungalow.

I got up early in the morning and headed to Phuket town. I wanted to see what it was like and then move on and stay at kata beach. There wasn't much there, people hassling you to get into taxis etc, so the next day I packed up my stuff and headed to Kata beach, it's only a short bus ride, and when I got there I couldn't find anywhere cheap to stay, so I lounged on the beach for a while and headed back to Phuket town, where I had found a great hostel. I went out for food with a guy that was in my dorm, I can't remember what his name was or where he was from (I should start writing this stuff down), then we went back to the hostel were a few people were watching dvds.

The next day I rented a scooter, I did wear a helmet and long trousers. It was a fun day, I went to a few of the viewpoints and took some photos, went to a few of the beaches. The only problem was that it rained a couple of times, so I had to quickly find places to pull over and go inside.

I headed to Phi Phi the day after that, and ran into Lisa pretty soon the day I got there. Her and Jordan had met up with one of their friends called Nicky who had been teaching with them in Korea, and they were all heading out for the night along with a girl from Canada called Fiona who was from the same set of bungalows. I joined them and we went first to a bar on the beach with a fire show (doesn't narrow it down much, most of the bars had fire shows, especially if they were on the beach). Lisa won a free bucket for a balloon game, and I got a free beer for doing fire rope skipping, we got some photos but you can't really tell its me doing it. Then we went to the street that the bungalows were on and got some buckets, as it was cheaper than in the bars, while there we met Miles again, along with a welsh guy called Lee and an English guy called Jake. Then we all went to another beach bar untill it closed. I lost my sandles, but managed to claim a pair of flip flops, but the day after Nicky found my sandles again, so I put the flip flops on a concrete blog in the beach bar, they had dissappeared later on, but I'm not sure if they went to their rightful owner. There was lots of lost sandles and flip flops on the beach so I didn't feel too bad, and sure the owner of my borrowed flip flops found some others.

That was kind of the routine for the time on Koh Phi Phi, the same thing happens every day on that island, go to the beach, eat, shower, go out, same music in the bars, you meet the same people, drink the same buckets. There was a bar called Reggae bar, which had a Boxing ring and people could volunteer to fight, which mainly resulted in slightly drunk people flailing their arms about. One night a Scottish guy bust a French guys nose, another night someone who had obviously done a bit of it before was kicking another guy in the head, then in the second round the losing guy finally landed a punch and everyone cheered. I didn't quite have the courage to volunteer although I was tempted by the free bucket that they gave to every volunteer.

We also met a guy called Ali, who had been travelling for 1.5 years and played poker online to get money, I would love to be good at poker and just do that for my life.

Me, Jordan, Lisa, Nicky and Fiona took a boat trip one day to Bamboo island and Maya bay (where the beach was filmed). The sea was really rough, and at times it seemed too rough for our tiny little boat, but it managed it.

On my last night on Phi Phi I decided it would be a good idea to stay awake all night drinking buckets untill I had to get my boat at 9, that way I would sleep in the minibus. This is not a good idea, minibuses and roads in Thailand are in some way and for some reason designed to prevent sleep. We stayed in the club untill it closed then on the way back Ali decided to get a tatoo, he already had one drunken tatoo, "Flavour Country", on one of his ankles, so he got another, "Beach Bum", written in Thai on his other ankle. Then we went back to their bungalows and listened to music until 7 am, when I went back to my hostel to pack my things.

On the bus, if my bum wasn't numb, then the road was bumpy, it was impossible to sleep. Plus I was really dehydrated for a long while until we stopped at a petrol station and I could get some water. I will not be doing that again...

General feelings about thailand are mixed. There are some really irritating places, I am never going to get in a taxi when the driver claps at me and shouts "taxi", I don't want a massage, I have better things to spend my money on, no matter how many a's you put in it("Massaaaaaaaaaaaaaaage?"). But past the annoyances there are some beautiful beaches, and a lot of fun to be had if you can look past a few of the more irritating tourists. I think in general you have to stay out of Bangkok for as long as possible, I was there for far to long because of the visa thing, and just don't go to phuket, it's pointless.

So now I'm in Penang, Malaysia, Just booked a ticket to India from KL on the 19th, so i've got a bit of time to explore a few places and cobble together some sort of route for India before I have to leave.

bye