Bab's Australia Video

Hey, yet another video upload. This is the video that Bab's shot while in Australia this year, check it out a few nice moments at George St. and up in Byron Bay at Splendour in The Grass.

Enjoy!

Merry Christmas

Instead of a boring xmas email or well wishes to every one sort of crap, just click my fansy smansy Skype "Call Me!" buton on the right hand side. If you have skype you'll get connected right away. If you don't have Skype follow this link to download it, you can make free calls to other computers any where in the world.
I'll ensure every one understands how to work it and you can get a personalised live audio xmas greeting from who ever is in our living room at the time.

Merry Xmas, and a happy fun and silly new year.

Cheers
Will C

Kho Tao Scuba Diving Video Now Online!!!

Woohooo, here is the video made on me and Roy's last dive of our Padi Open Water Certificate.
Click play to get it started, If you wanna see it in a bigger window use the little button on the right. It does cut out the little intro bit (nothing special any way) but if you do wanna see it all click on this LINK to see it start to finish.

Naked men running!

Naked men running!, originally uploaded by dreadfuldan.

This is a photo i found wandering through Flickr, from last years Merideth Gift. Click it for a closer image ( if you dare ) but does any one else think that on the far right, behind the older tanned guy is Stewie?

Virgin Mobile Edinburgh

Well guess who is the new Christmas Part Timer at Edinburgh Megastore Virgin Mobile?
Me! Yeah, I start on Monday there are two part timers starting. In the new year we have a special elimination round and one of us goes full time, and the other one gets the arse.
Should be good, sorta sucks it doesn’t start right now, and sorta sucks its only gonna be about 20 hours a week for the first few weeks, but apart from that it should be all easy and stuff. It was pretty lucky, applications closed yesterday, so if I had been any later I would have missed out.

Cheers

Well Im in Edinburgh

Well, I'm in Edinburgh, staying at a backpackers while a house is organised, doing the job hunt thing today. It's a bit cold and wet, but not as bad as the depths of a Melbourne winter so I’m dealing fine, for now. For those of you who haven’t been able to get to this website for the last few weeks, I fixed it. Its all working fine now. Http://photos.willcowan.com is doing fine, and I’ll start sticking up some pics of Edinburgh. If you have the time (or are just really bored) you should be able to flick through my last few blog entries, as I had a bit of spare time and no Digicam they’re friggen huge, but most are worth the read.

I just got a mobile phone aswell my number is +44 77 22 06 22 66.
Cheers

UK, Home Sweet Home

That’s it, its all over, I’m now in UK.
I just chilled out in China, didn’t see allot of stuff. I spent the majority of the time in Sculpting in Time, a quite cool café / restaurant, in the Uni district of WuDaoKou, I only ended up there due to its free Wi-Fi, but I quite liked it. There were a fair few expats and a few Chinese Uni students, lots of people heads buried in school books or laptops. I went shopping with Cindy and Jack to a local tech market, and picked up a 300 gig external hard drive for the laptop, thanks heaps guys for your help. It was great fun hanging out with you.
I caught up with Roy at the Beijing airport, ready for the flight to Heathrow via Doha, Qatar. We flew Qatar air, who were friggen great, brand new airbus A330, personal video on demand. Not just little tellies on the seat in front but being able to pick and choose when and what you wanna watch. It was cool the plane was big clean and the food didn’t suck. Our flight, Doha to Heathrow was delayed by a few hours and the airport wasn’t much chop. Roy was nursing a fairly decent hangover after a few to many red wines, and unfortunately had given Ralph a pretty decent talking to during the flight.
We Tubed it to Celia, Curt, Dickie and Adelle’s place in Golders Green, first up we made a quick mission to Tesco’s for some big bottles of cheap Cider.  You can tell alcohol isn’t that classy when it’s in a 2 litre plastic bottle (or in our case 2.2L with bonus 10%). It tasted fine and we had a pretty good catch up. Every one is in the process of working out their New Years plans, it seems they are off to Berlin.
I’m writing this from the London to Edinburgh train, £14 is what I’ve been told is a very cheap price, it’s a crap load more than the $2.60 I paid for my last good sized journey, a 10 hour bus trip across Sri Lanka. The trains are pretty nice and it’s only about a 4 or 5 hour journey.
Julia’s meeting me at the train station, and taking me to the guys place for a surprise entry, It’s gonna be great. I can’t believe it has been 4 months since I’ve seen every one.

Beijing

I arrived in Beijing feeling like I’ve spent the last 4 days in a solid state of transit. 2 buses and a vegie truck from Kandy to Pottuvil, then slept at Whatshisname’s place. I had a bit of a swim in Arugam Bay, Jasmine made lunch, I had a nap then caught the over night bus Pottuvil to Colombo, an hour in a Tuktuk to the airport, flight to Bangkok, flight to Beijing and a hour on a bus to get to a hostel.
Beijing is cool, it’s got a funny feel to it. There are some very cool fashions, they most defiantly have the coolest shoes, and loads of big cosy jackets. I think it’s maybe just because the only things I’ve seen people wear for the last few months is flip flops and T-shirts. I was listening to TripleJ on my iPod on the flight over, and caught a story on the underground Chinese punk rock scene. They had an interview with two bands from Beijing, it was just a nice reminder of the funny underground scenes in places like this, I might try and check it out..
After a good look around, I fell asleep pretty early, but then woke up fairly well rested at about 1am. I went for a pretty good wander to find some food and a beer, this area is pretty dead at night but I did find a little restaurant. Seeing the little drinks menu on the table, all in Chinese I realised there was a fair chance I would have no idea what I was going to order. The waiter bought out the menu, a menu with pictures, one of mans best inventions. I picked out a redish soup with bits of beef and stuff in it. As the waited brought it to the table he also brought a waft of the familiar and some what disturbing smell of offal. A quick taste informed me what I thought was beef was liver, I piled in a fair bit of salt and got stuck into it. It was ok, the soup was tasty, but the texture and lingering aftertaste of the liver was getting to me. I soon realised there were some other whiteish chunks floating in it, they seemed to be fat, but were more rubbery, like skin. I ate around them, and finished most of the kidney, until after a quick swish with the chopsticks to grab the last few bits, a piece of white flesh floated to the top. I prodded it gave it a quick examination and as I lifted it out of the soup I realised it was a fucking snout. That’s right, yum yum it must be favourite around here kidney and pig face soup. I felt my stomach tighten just that little bit, had a fair bit of trouble swallowing my last bit of kidney and gently pushed the bowl away from me.

Eastern Sri Lanka

Oh yeah, If your actually reading all of these, good work since I lost my camera I’ve started writing a crap load, it’s as much for me as you guys, but I hope you enjoy.
I had made plans to head east, and set my sights for Arugam Bay on the east coast, John and Scott’s Lonely Planet advised it’s a chilled out surfie town. The whole east and south coast was very badly affected by the Tsunami, and it was a few months past the surfing season, so I wasn’t that sure what to expect. I caught a 2 pm mini bus east and after a bit of a breakdown and a roadside bearing change we made it after dark to Ampara. I was lucky enough to make it just before the next bus left, and with lots of pointing at the map and broken English, caught another bus south to Siyarnbalanduwa. I had some pretty funny conversations with the guys on the bus, they were all pretty friendly, the bus was continuing on to Colombo. At Siyarnbalanduwa, we stopped for some food I grabbed some curry and roti, and when looking for the dunny bumped into the guys I had been talking to, out the back having a sneaky spliff in the back room. I joined in, and wandered out a few minutes later fairly red eyed looking to be pointed in the direction of the closest guest house.
Not quite going to plan, a guy (whose name I’ve forgotten and will now on refer to as Whatshisname) from Pottuvil (the town just near Arugam Bay) offered his services as a taxi in his vegie delivery truck. Over some broken English and a bit more pointing, I accepted and jumped in his truck, his 2 buddies Osama and Assif also piled in and my bag was chucked in the back.  As we started heading down the shoddy dirt track in the dark, I firstly realised I had left my bottle of water on the restaurant table and had the dries like a mofo. The check points were pretty regular, and proper army turret style. The check points consisted of a chicane to slow the traffic, a big pile of sandbags with a few pairs of eyes and a machine gun or 2 peering out through a hole. With introductions underway Osama informed me his last name was Bin Laden, and laughing saying how famous he is. Whatshisname kept repeating “I am legitimate businessman” but at one stage did mention the heroin trade, he even did a little “chasing the dragon” action with his hands to indicate the consumption method of smack around here. To make things worse he kept calling his house his bed, and when he meant to say I am tired and want to go home, with his bad pronunciation he kept saying “I am very bad, very bad” it didn’t fill me with confidence. All the checkpoints just looked at us as we slowed down and let us through, Osama bought it to my attention “ooooh lots check point, but no checking, ‘cos I am Osama Bin Laden, very famous.” Cue the hysterical laughter from Assif and Whatshisname as we bumpily headed down a dark dirt track in far eastern Sri Lanka totally deserted apart from military checkpoints. Cue the stoned paranoia from me.
Whatshisname (who spoke the better broken English fro the trio) was saying “soon elephant, elephant 10 kilometres, 4 kilometres” and low and behold in about 4k’s Whatshisname slammed on the breaks ‘cos there was fucking great big elephant and its baby standing in the middle of the road. We flicked our lights a bit, Osama jumped out with the torch and did a little dance waving the torch at the elephant. After about 10 minutes they both wandered off into the bushes. Over the next 20 minutes I think I saw about a dozen elephants by the side of the road, it was super super cool.
We arrived an hour or so later, dropped Osama off at his place, and arrived at Whatshisname place where he honked and honked until Jasmine, his wife woke up, got out of bed and opened the gates for us. We had quick introductions, Jasmine headed off to the kitchen to make us cups of tea, and fixed me and Assif’s beds.
A few days before I had realised hat I had gone a few days and not actually spoken to a female, I had asked for directions and they pointed and nodded, I had bought things they handed me change, smiled an nodded,  but no actual conversation. I really don’t think female rights are that high on the political agenda in Sri Lanka. After a fairly long and arduous journey and very tired I crashed out on their spare bed, so damn tired I had to pause and try to work out if my cup of tea had been drugged and I was gonna wake up minus my iPod, laptop, credit cards, cash, passport and a few essential organs. I opened my eyes nice and wide counted 1 through 10, and then back down to 1 was pretty sure I was feeling ok then fell into a deep slumber within a minute or 2.

Will Cowan.

Sri Lanka

I flew into Colombo late at night, and got a taxi into town to the YMCA, which from what I’ve heard is on the of the few budget backpackers in the city.  There was a nice little curry shop over the road where I ended up eating about 5 times, never paying much more than a dollar for a Roti, Dahl, Chicken Curry and a cup of Tea. I had a decent chat with a Spanish guy living in Goa, India. He filled me with confidence with words or recommendation like “This country is full of thieves” “Don’t trust any of them” “Colombo is a horrible place” “I can’t wait to get back to India” and one I know Roy will like “I’d rather be in Tasmania, during winter.” He was pretty much right though, due to the presidential election the whole city was shut down, with army and police setting up check points through out the city and very very few shops open. If I’d read the Smart Traveller Aussie government website would have advised me

• We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution in Sri Lanka in the lead-up to and the period following presidential elections scheduled for 17 November 2005. The security situation throughout the country, including in Colombo, may deteriorate during the campaign period. Numerous violent incidents, including murder and assault, occurred in the lead-up to elections in 2001 and 2004. Incidents often occurred on roads as party officials and candidates travelled between campaign engagements. You should be vigilant and watch the media for information about possible new safety or security threats.

The next morning I went to the train station to book a seat up to Kandy, a smallish city I had heard of in the hills. I met 2 guys from UK who had arrived the day before and were also booking the same ticket. We grabbed a 50 rupee Tuk Tuk ride together to check out what was meant to be a big beach side market, but due to the elections it was deserted. No worries, I started to walk back to YMCA to grab my bags and stuff and then head to the train station. This is where a funny thing happened, I was offered a Tuk Tuk, just over a block from my Hostel, and I said “No, It’s just around the corner” “No Worries” “No Worries?” “Yeah, Hop In” “Give me a lift if you want but its free ok?” “OK”. During the ride, I told him I needed to head to the Train Station in about an hour, he agreed to meet me back outside for that fare. I packed my bags had another bit of curry and met him outside to get to the train station. The Train station isn’t far, a 50 Rupee ride. We arrived and I handed him the 50, and he refused babbling “two rides 50 each, 100” “no the other one was free” “Give me 100” “dude, it’s a 50 rupee ride” the usual stuff, but when I went to give him a now slightly generous 60 rupee he refused “It’s 100 rupee ride, I want 100” “here take the 60” “I’m no beggar, I wont take 60” I handed him the 60 and turned away to walk into the station, he jumped out and pushed the money back into my hands “If you cannot afford to pay me 100 then you must need the money more than me” shit?! He was refusing the fare. He went to drive off and I put the cash on his back seat, he pulled over jumped out and gave it back. It was all a little strange. The train was nice, a few hours a bit of a nap and we were there. A quick run down on Kandy, shared a room with John and Scott, (the guys from UK) once again every thing was closed the first night. The next day we went to the Buddha’s Tooth Temple, supposedly housing a tooth from Buddha. The Tamil tigers bombed the temple in the 90’s so that was a little strange, a fair bit of security (pat downs and stuff) getting in, and a whole bunch of photos from the bombing and rebuilding, not something you expect to see at a temple. We then went and had tea at the Royal Botanic Gardens. The first time I had actually done touristy things in ages…….

Bangkok, Round 4.

Bangkok felt strangely familiar, it’s my fourth time back in less than 4 months. Kao San Rd is the backpackers Mecca of Bangkok with pirated, CDs, DVDs, T-shirts, shoes, shorts, university degrees and ID cards all available. It’s weird that so much action goes on in this tiny pocket of the city. I really noticed how much smaller it all seemed, not being blown out by every smell, sound and sight, I was fairly comfortable wandering through the hustle and bustle, checking into my guest house and wandering down stairs for a beer.
I ended up have a few Sam Song and Sodas sitting in the street, with a few Thai guys, a Finish guy and Dutch chick that had been living here for years. It was good, not only since I couldn’t afford to drink in a bar, but they were an interesting crew. Nui, was from Chaing Mai, down in Bangkok selling clothes in a stall. And (I’ve forgotten his name and I feel stupid for doing that but it was Aran or something like that, from here on I’ll just call him Aaron) the Finish guy called Aaron, he lives in Edinburgh but goes home to Finland every so often and drives a reindeer sleigh at some tourist park.
The next day I awake with a fairly solid hangover and proceeded to sort out the police report for the lost mobile phone, then went back to Kao San Rd and had a pretty good chat with a bunch of Aussies who were straight off the plane. After a fair few beers I had hatched a plan (as I had told Julia I may not be able to make it to Bangkok in time) that they should head out to the airport with me. They stand there with a “Julia Goulia” sign and when they see her, tell her that they met me in Cambodia, I couldn’t make it as my bus was broken, but they had flown and said they would catch up with her for her stop over. Well I ended up losing them in Kao San rd. (I expect they wussed out and did a runner) but on the way to the taxi rank I saw Aaron (a much more solid choice) in the same spot in the street, and with in a minute he had agreed and we were on out way out to the airport.
We got out there about 15 minutes after the plane had landed, quickly checked the Bus and Taxi lines then proceeded to the info desk to find out where people from Julia’s flight would be entering the Terminal. We quickly grabbed some beers and Assumed The Position, Aaron by the stream of people clutching a section of beer a carton with Julia Goulia written on it with a permanent pen. I was outside keeping an eye on what he’s up to waiting for the confused meet-up, let him set the scene and mosey out side, cue me jumping out from behind a pillar, surprise and hilarity ensues. After asking heaps of people what flight they were on, and a few more beers well over an hour had passed. I expect our info booth experience miss guided us, and we were waiting at the wrong exit.  We jump back in a taxi and feeling quite unsuccessful return back to town.

Cambodia to Bangkok

I caught the $US12 bus from Siem Reap to Bangkok. The lonely Planet, and most travellers had dissed the trip, saying its rough bumpy and time consuming. Well in my rush to meet Julia in Bangkok it was pretty much my only option. It was a mini bus of about 15 frarang, all fairly cool with a good international mix. The bus trip started off well, for about the first 5 minutes until we left Siem Reap. I had originally though that the crappy bus ride would entail a huge mountain range, but no. It's all very flat, apart from the fucking monstrous pot holes scattered intermittently through out the road. It was an interesting zig zag path weaving between the trenches. I found the best technique was to stick my sleeping bag under my arse and loosely brace my self so when we hit a bump, and every one bounced I just managed to land on something soft. Apart from a few elbows hitting the window sill and one or two miss calculations, my butt hit the sleeping bag nearly every time. It was going fairly well for the first 6 or so hours, until a fairly lage ditch caused the suspension to bottom out and with a bit of a crunch it broke. We continued on, but the tire was hitting the wheel arch. We pulled to the side and piled out on to the dirt trip, a few local kids tending the fields wandered over and inquisitively stood at a distance. They gazed at the dozen funny looking white people climb under a bus ask questions then start a game of hacky sack. The quite funny Russian born Canadian had the right idea, and with in a few minutes had her thumb out at the Ute loads of confused Cambodians.

Soon, a plan was hatched, we hitch to the next major town where they will organise a different way to get us to the Thai border. I threw my bag on to the roof of a ute and climbed into the back as 3 others did the same, unluckily the ute had at least 20 Cambodians in it already. So say it was squishy was an understatement at least sardines in a can have olive oil or tomato sauce to slosh around in a bit. It all started to get pretty uncomfortable including a near panic attack from the British girl who was positioned precariously on the edge rail, with her cousin sitting on her lap and fuck all to hang onto. I think the highlight of the trip was me realising I had a bunch of postcards in my bag that I had scored in Phenom Pehn, I caused a fair bit of excitement was I passed them around, translating the English descriptions and locations of kids on buffalos waterfalls and street scenes. We pulled over to drop some one off ( or pick some one up if that was even possible ) as a larger truck cruised past with plenty of room, I quickly jumped shit and jumped onto the back of the other truck. I quickly made friends with the people on the back. My Khmer vocabulary is zero, and their English was about the same but with a few place names, allot of pointing and some strange facial expression my new circle of friends included the guy with aviators, the weird guy with the freaked out crazy man laugh, the guy who's bag I accidentally trod on, the first Asian I've seen with a full face beard and one of my favourites, the middle aged lady with a wicked cackling hoot of a laugh. She would say something in Khmer (usually including farang) point at me and virtually piss her pants. She had a giant big full face grin and sound effects any Sitcom sound engineer would pay top dollar for. When she made the connection with the bearded Asian and my self she nearly fell off the back of the truck.

After about a while we arrived at the next town, I met up with the other tourists, and my bags that I had left on the first ute. We were told to put all our bags onto a ute, then climbed ontop of our bags for the rest of the journey.

We made it to the Thai border but it did seem the driver felt the need to somehow make up the 2 hours we had been delayed during the course of the hour long journey. It was good to be back in Thailand, we waited around a bit got some food changed some cash, got hassled by a crap load of beggars then jumped into what seemed like excessive opulence, not just being inside, but air-conditioned, not just having a seat, but it being soft and reclinable. I must have been in such shock that a few hours later when I got off the bus in Bangkok I fucking left my phone in the seat pocket in front of me. Bringing the tally to a camera and a phone in about a week, after 3 months of a fairly unblemished record I was fairly pissed off. Luckily I had backed up my stuff just a few days before so I should have a fairly easy restoration of phone numbers etc.

Cambodia to Bangkok

I love this photo, I wish it showed how really really jam packed the back of this ute was. I'll go into details tomorrow but jeepers the guide book says its a hard trip and it really really was.
Cheers

Angkor Wat

Well I'll be honest, this trip I've never actually done the temple thing, I've steered pretty well clear of them all together. Apart from the few times a guide snuck one into a tour, I really didn't see any. But Angkor rocked, unlike any thing I've seen before. It's huge ancient and powerful. I can now imagine how Nicky felt as the clouds parted high up in the Andes to see the wonders of Machu Picchu. I had left Roy the day before in Phenom Penh as I was going to rush through in the plan of meeting Julia Goulia in Bangkok on the 13^th, he was going to head to the beach at Sihanoukville. I booked a moto driver for the day, and at 5am met him out side my hotel. $US10 for a moto driver sunrise til sunset seemed like a good idea and $US20 to get into Angkor seemed steep but well worth it. I got to Angkor Wat about quarter past, unluckily the stars had faded and the sky was beginning to get light.

I spent the first few minutes taking photos of the lines of paparazzi style tourists (my old camera managed to take photos in between intermittent weird beeping and turning its self off). Think sidelines of the grand prix, with a line of zoom lenses on tripods. I found a nice spot off to the side and sat while the sun came up. Unfortunately not an amazing sunrise but, still good to arrive in near darkness and see it all appear in front of you. There was a pretty solid stream of people heading in, I grabbed my iPod, chucked on 1 Giant Leap, and proceeded up the stairs. Angkor Wat is pretty huge, fucking old and made of a shit load of stone. It's weird to sit there and just think how big every one of those bricks are. How heavy they all are, and how far they were lugged to be stacked up. Nearly every single one was intricately carved. There are hundreds of Buddha carvings and massive scenes depicting king's life stories and huge battles.

I found a nice little spot, wrote a post card to George st. and enjoyed watching, listening, and soaking it all in. I managed to spend about 3 or 4 hours there, including a full hour in a nice spot over looking the main entrance where I listened to Stay Human start to finish. There was loads of reminiscing, thinking about the past and future, a very nice little bit of Zen time.

Next was Bayon Temple in Angkor Thom, It has over 200 massive carved faces, it was impressively cool but it was getting crowded and quite hot. After lunch and a nice long snooze in the restaurant's hammock, we cruised to the very famous Ta Prohm. Film set of Tomb Raider, cover photo of the Lonely Planet a beautiful temple superbly engulfed by the surrounding jungle. It was very photogenic, I had a local show me through and point out the good spots. With the day nearly over I made it up to Phnom Bakheng, a crowded smallish temple on top of a biggish hill to watch the sunset. The walk was fairly steep, but quite entertaining watching the package tour fat bastards struggle up getting way out of their comfort zone.

Click here to watch a slide show of the photos…. Most are pretty cool, it was a very very cool day.

Cheers

--
Http://www.WillCowan.com

Cambodia

The next morning Patchy and I had planned to meet bright and early (8am) to catch the bus to Phenom Phen, and Roy was gonna stay so he could do a tunnel tour. Patchy no showed (I later find out the lazy prick didn’t get up until 2pm) so I solo to Cambodia. I had managed to purchase some flip flops the night before, we were playing pool against a local he and laughed at me for having no thongs. I offered him 50000 dong (about $3.50) for his, and he obliged. I later found out that he only paid 30000 for them and by the time I wandered back past that bar, he had already bought a replacement pair. We swapped and I kept the new pair.
So I arrived in Cambodia, and had made friends with a nice but timid Japanese guy (think, opening line at the border crossing “ohh I am travelling by my self and I am so so lonely” he was doing a visa run as he was meant to be flying to France soon but was “so so scared” or the riots. I advised him of the irony that he was scared of going to France, so went to Cambodia instead, then had some really good chats about him studying in Australia and holidaying in Tassie and stuff. He found Tassie nice but devoid of fellow Asians. I also met Tony from London, he had shared a bus with Patchy a few days before, and we had met at Go 2 bar in Ho Chi Mihn. The first night was pretty quite, funny how a day on a bus doing SFA can make you tired.
The next day I did little but went out for some drinks with Tony, He had organised a Killing Fields moto (motorbike) driver for the next day, and he was our personal limo driver for the evening (that’s if you can call one of the most clapped out pieced of crap mopeds a limo, but well he did drive us places, until I got drunk enough that I hassled him to let me drive) we drank Beer Lao, I had a great hot and sour chicken soup, and we chatted to the kids selling rip off books about Cambodia and south east Asian guide books. Tony had picked up a Cambodia Lonely Planet in Vietnam, it seems they go for something close to 10% of the cover price. But you can see the dodgy photo copy marks and stuff. The new ones are a heap better, the covers look better and all the text is nice and clear. Although the girl selling the books was referring to us as either lady boys or monkeys (I get the monkey call often due to the beard) she had moments of being very sweet, and polite. She had great English and was planning on being a teacher when she left school, so I bought a book.
The next day, Tony’s moto driver arrived as promised, and I hired a 250cc dirt bike. Although I didn’t get a chance to really let it hit top speed, zigging through the traffic with twice the power of any thing else on the road is quite fun, its big and comfy and good on the crappy roads. Our guide dropped off at a firing range first, and for $30 Tony got to fire 30 rounds on an AK47. there was a price list covering ak’s, M16’s, Tommy Guns, a range of hand guns, some machine gun that looked like a small turret and grenades, who ever scored these relics from the wars must be making some what more than minimum wage. Depending on how affordable the police bribes they’d pay to keep the place open.
The photos are here of the Killing Fields, its an odd experience a fairly small plot of land where close to 9000 bodies have been excavated from mass graves. The Genocideal Pol Pot regime of the 70’s was unbelievable, a shrine on the site has 17 layers of human bones, the first layers filled with age and sex classified skulls. Seeing skulls with execution style bullet wounds between the eyes, or a 14 year old’s skull that had been caved in was a moving experience. As the photos show there was just so many of them. It’s hard to think each and every one of them was a son, daughter, mother or father and trying to fathom what a country would go through with its government ordering mass murder like that.

first update in ages.

Ok so after getting an email from Mel friggen ages ago that we should re-confirm our flights make sure its done at least 3 days before etc, etc. Us being “Don’t need to do that we’re gonna push back those flights I’ll just ring up one of these days and push it back” So I awake from a almighty slumber, rock down to Crazy Kim’s bearing the brunt of a relatively sever hangover, to teach a second day of English. After, I wander into a net café to “Make the Call” I dig around and find my phone where I have the flight details and contact number for Air Sri Lanka, and then “Holly Shiiiiiit” the flights at 9.15pm Thursday November the 3rd, “Shit that’s real close” I think to my self and double checking the calendar my heart skips a beat as I realise I‘m on a beach side resort 6 hours north of Ho Chi Mihn City, with a flight to catch from Bangkok in about 9 hours. Running sucks, dong it barefoot in Nha Trang sucks (Halloween was a big night and I awoke sans Flip Flops) having a thumping hang over related head ache sucks also. So as I sprint back to the hotel, side stepping shards of glass, piles of goo and trying to keep to any surface under about 60C, my head jostles around in my skull, with the thoughts of “Crap we’re gonna have to forfeit the flights, I wonder if they will… I hope they….. ohhh crap.” So I burn through about $15 of credit calling Air Sri Lanka for them to tell me to call STA in HCM. I Call them and they Bu (my new best friend) advises “ohh ok, come to the office and we’ll sort it out” I’m “We are in Nha Trang” “Oh no worries come in tomorrow” I’m dubious and reword the situation to see if he still agrees and tells us it cab be fixed, “yeah it can” I try again and he still agrees.
We book the night bus and head to Ho Chi Mihn, and low and behold the day after the flight has already left, we wander in pay $USD25 and he gets us on a flight on the 18th, and pushes our Beijing flight back respectively.
We celebrate pretty hard that night. The next night we cross paths with Patchy Jim (from Ha Long Bay) again, so Ho Chi Mihn City was a bit of a trash fest, on my last night I manages to loose my new digi cam on a stumble home. Sucks the big one…. Luckily I’ld done a recent back up to the iPods and Laptop so only lost a few good photos from that night.

Over and out.

Hoi An, Vietnam

Hey, well we spent a few days in Hoi An, a funny town of about 60,000 people, with over 200 tailor shops. I was recommended a tailor by Melbournian I’d met in Hue, so we went to check it out. It was a fairly big tailors, and not as pushy as the majority of the smaller places. We spent a while flicking through some catalogues and magazines, a fairly simple process of point at a picture, point at a fabric get measured up and it head back the next day for a fitting. I got a shirt, casual jacket and a pair of pants made up, it came to about $100. There are some photos here. The next night on the walk home form a few beers we heard some guitar and singing coming from round a street corner. Welsh Loy, and I cruised over and invited our selves to join the group of about 7 or so guys. We sat under a street light singing a fairly strange collection of English and Vietnamese songs. The only English song they all could sing was Happy Birthday, so we get a few rounds of that to start with. It’s quite a challenge to sing along to Vietnamese songs. We mainly just got stuck into the rice wine and a few weird little nibbly things. Sitting around singing and even a bit of dancing, it was a really fun night.
Now we’re in Nha Trang, another over night bus got us down here, once again fairly painless. I was even given a sleeping mat and blanket and slept in the aisle. Some bad news regarding the bus trips is that we are finally out of tamazapans. Unfortunately from what I can tell the Vietnamese aren’t too big on the over the counter sedatives either.
Nha Trang’s been good so far, a big Halloween party at the Sailing Club was out introduction to the night life. At one stage of the night after a fair few drinks from the witches cauldron (bad ((but free)) sangria style red wine punch) some of the staff used a combination of toilet paper and packing tape me dress me up as a zombie, it worked quite well for about 10 minutes until the extra layers just started me make we sweat. Unfortunately for the staff I had no plans of wandering the streets of Vietnam, Pissed, dressed up like a zombie and suffering from heat exhaustion, so I pretty quickly escaped from my bog roll outfit.
This morning I taught English at a local community centre, some of the postcard selling kids had told me about it yesterday. It was a really small class, and about 7 volunteers turned up. We spent most of the lesson doing previous, current and future verbs. I think the kids did a better job than us teachers. After class we met up at the beach and had a fairly rigorous game of soccer in the afternoon. They were all really quite smart and well spoken, the community centre is set up by Crazy Kim, who runs a bar and a “Hands off the Kids” anti Pedo group. I think we’ll head down south a bit further on a night bus tomorrow.

Hue, Vietnam

Since my last update we’ve done a few cities, Hue (pronounced whey like curds and whey) and Hoi An (the Taylor Town) and just arrived in Nha Trang (Beach Side High rise Resorts) this morning.

Hue, it’s fairly small has a very cool old town surrounded by a moat and some big walls, cool bridges over the moat and a big lit up bridge over the river. Roy did a DMZ tour, I still remember doing it from when I was here with the oldies and can’t remember it being that exciting, Roy came back saying it wasn’t at all exciting. I did have quite a funny day though, I got a push bike and went exploring looking for some breaky. I cam round a corner on the far edge of town and some young guys were training their Roosters for some cock fighting. I stopped to take a few photos. They trying the “one photo, one dollar” I laughed “no way”, they seemed happy enough just to look at photos of them selves. ( not quite the spastic fits of laugher that over took they kids in ThaTek, Laos ) I got a few photos (New camera is a bit nicer than the old) as started to sprinkle some rain, and an older guy came round the corner who could speak a bit of English.  He invited us all into some ones house to get out of the rain. We had a few cups of tea, a fair few of us crammed into the front room of some guy’s house. Once the tea was gone they pulled out the Rice Whiskey, a fairly strong tasting Metho concoction brewed in large earthenware pots. We finished off one bottle, and I paid the 80 cents for another bottle, and we got stuck into that. About halfway through that, my stomach lining started to remind me it was only 9am and I hadn’t eaten yet. I managed to get away a few shots later, promising to return that afternoon with some of the photos printed out.  I got some omelette and bread into my now Metho filled stomach, wandered back to the guest house to select the photos to print, then to a local photo lab. After dropping off the memory card I walked out into a “hello, where you from?” “Melbourne, Australia” “oooh, uhhh, Springvale, I have family in Springvale” “yeah, cool” “ooh today is a happy day my Australian friend, we should go drink, and eat together” I’m a little hesitant, but with a bit of a buzz from the mornings whiskey I agree. He jumps on his motorbike, I’m on my pushy behind and we head over to the other side of town for lunch. It’s a fairly large undercover collection of plastic chairs and trestle tables, we order some food. A small esky filled with beer, water and a bit of ice is plonked at the end of our table. His English is really really good so we chatted a fair bit about Vietnam, Australia, our families and my previous visit to Vietnam. We put a reasonable dent in a massive bowl of some of the nicest fried rice I’d had in Vietnam, and some yummy prawn and veggie stir fry, and empty to beers from the esky.  The bill arrives, and he pays ( against my protests ) and then he starts reminding how good it has been to talk and drink together, and how it would be great to tell his wife about me, over a bottle of wine or whiskey that I buy for them. I feel the little “click” of things falling into place, unluckily for him I haven’t been to the atm in a few days and only had about 100,000 dong on me (about $8.50).  we head to a local shop to buy a bottle, and he leads me towards the expensive shelf of imports, I remind him of my previously stated cash situation and he begrudgingly accepts some weird looking Chinese whiskey in a funny shaped bottle. By my calculations he was still about $1 up on the deal, but I don’t think he would have been quite so generous at lunch if he had known he wasn’t gonna score bottle of import.

I’ll update on Hoi An, and put some photos of what I got made tomorrow.

Cheers
Will Cowan

Ha Long Bay

Ha Long Bay was very very amazing. It’s the one place we didn’t get to when I was here with the oldies that I wished we had.
We caught the bus up to HaiPhong, and spent the night there. Had dinner at a little beer hall, it had a pretty amazing assortment of meats on the menu, from eel, snake, bear, turtle, pigeon and a few we hadn’t heard of. Roy had the beef, and I had the chicken, washed down with a few of the 3000 Dong glasses of beer. I had a fair wander that evening. I had an interesting conversation with some locals that consisted of passing my Vietnamese Phrasebook around and pointing at words, ld flip to the index find the answer in English and point to the translation, I played badminton with some locals lucky they were about 3 hours and 6 beers into their game so I didn’t go to badly, and got my self lost about 3 or 4 times. That night we went out to the big discothèque in town. 2 Security guards opened the big doors for you, you had to go through a big industrial themed air lock inside there was loads of bad music (Asian guys mc’ing over horrible dance music). The guys uniforms were this slight umpaloompa / Cabbage patch kid cross over, bad Hawaiian shirt but with bright orange overalls on, it’s also the first bar I’ve been to that had a bunch of podium dancers.
The next morning we caught the ferry to Cat Ba Island, Vietnam’s only populated island and the gateway to Ha Long Bay. We caught up with James, Camilla and Maria, well a hotel hustler at the pier did his spiel about his hotel, then said “ohhh you know English man and 2 Swedish womans, uuuuummm Mr James, yes yes?” and he gestured to his hotel and from the top balcony the 3 were waving at us.
We had a day at the beach and another fairly big night of drinking games. The next morning, bright and early headed down to meet for our boat trip.
The boat wasn’t quite as plush as advertised in the brochure, but it looked nice and cosy. We had a very cool few days, doing the usual, watch amazing scenery, eat, swim, kayak, more amazing scenery (there are about 3000 islands dotted around this fairly big bay, jutting out of the ocean with caves and floating villages and stuff scattered in between), swim, jump off the boat, go through caves, eat, drink, swim, play more drinking games, swim (they have the wickedest phosphor fluorescent algae, like swimming in pixie dust) and then sleep. Then eat swim etc. We made it back to Hanoi yesterday evening and pretty much crashed out.
Over the last few weeks my cameras been getting very dodgy, loads of really blurry photos, during the boat trip instead of turning on it just sorta beeped at me. I’m guessing it got damp during the hill tribe trek, and again during this boat trip.
So today I lashed out, and bought a new camera, had to be done. If insurance plays nice I’ll be out of pocket about $200 due to the upgrade, but this will have to sit on my credit card for a while until it’s sorted out.  On the upside, I’ve got a 7 mega pixel digicam now.
Tonight we catch the bus to Hue, it’s meant to be a fairly unpleasant 14 hour trip, but it’s a fraction of the cost of a sleeper train, so it’s got to be done.
Photos are online here

The Best of Thailand

Click the image above to see a collection of some of my favorite Thailand photos.

Hope you enjoy.

We made it to Vietnam

We made it to Vietnam the 23 hour bus ride wasn’t too bad at all. There was plenty of space on the bus (no livestock either) we spent from about 5.30pm til 1.30am.  I read my first book of my travels and knocked over “High Fidelity” during the first leg. Just as I finished, the bus pulled over. It was there that a Vietnamese guy who was really helpful told us we were at the border town and that the border opens at 8am and showed us upstairs and showed us our bedrooms. It was just a normal basic mattress and mozi net. Roy and I shared a room the two Swedes who we had chatted to had the other room and I’m guessing the non-farangs stayed downstairs.
We were woken up as to some fast talking Vietnamese woman who turned on a light upstairs (my initial reaction is “what the fuck is some one doing talking so loud in our guest house for”) the friendly guy advised us simply “we go now” and with in 30 seconds the bus driver was honking profusely hurrying every one up, never mind a quick freshen up or even a chance to go for a piss.
The border crossing was fairly standard show passport, give money, fill in forms, rinse, and repeat. We even had to stick out luggage through an airport style scanner. I have my serious doubts it was very effective as the guy manning the monitor was buttering his toast as my luggage went through, and the examination table has this massive big spider web stretched from the middle of the table onto the wall next to it.
So from about 9am until 6.30pm we sent getting from the border to Hanoi. I pulled out my laptop and me and Roy watch Motorcycle Diaries, it was a really good film, made me wanna do a bike mission again (only huge this time) , and also go to South America.
Compared with Laos, Vietnam is fucking busy, even the country side is packed. People here don’t have front yards, every square foot of space is growing some sort of crop. I had also forgotten what the air is like here, you can stare at the sun in the middle of the day it just looks like a orange full moon. I also had forgotten what a bunch of dodgy mother fuckers Vietnamese can be. The normal, “Free taxi to my guest house”, no we are meeting friends at this place, “OK I get mini bus for you to take you to your place”, 3 stops of “come see my guest house” or blatant lie of “OK this is your guest house”, it comes to fuck this we’ll just get out and walk.
But we finally made it, had a nice (but expensive) meal of Indian, and went out for a beer. It’s 11pm now so time for another beer, then we go explore the city a bit tomorrow then up to Ha Long Bay.
As usual I’ve bought a new sim card and chucked my old Laos one in the pile. My new Vietnamese phone number is +84915449586.
Tomorrow I’ll organize my photos a bit better and finalise my “Best of Thailand” and my “Best of Laos” collections.

Cheers
Will Cowan

Good Night Laos, Good Evening Vietnam

Well, the lat few days I've spent on the back of a motorbike, just a random cruise. Picked a few spots on the map and tried to get there. Laos seems allot drier than i expected, long straight gravel roads and an amazing amount of eucalyptus trees make it fel quite homely.I met some really nice and interesting people, the only people down there who can speak English are those who have come to Vientiane to study, so not many. They were very friendly and very eager to get a bit of English practice in. It was especially cool because of the Mekong River Boat Racing festival that’s happening in a few days.  Each place I went to had a little sideshow alley games and there were loads of people out.  There are a few photos of the trip here. During the trip i managed to go a full 24 hours with out seeing another white face and in Thahkuk where i stayed there were 2 tourists and 5 Europeans in the whole city. As you would expect, there wasn’t a internet café in sight, so the competition winners who have been waiting since Wednesday can now have their moment of glory.

Julia Goulia, with her slightly morbid but excellently written Haiku

    Death. Dodgy Thai food.
    Gravy bum, vomit then dead.
    Tragedy, despair.

Takes out the first prize, and receives a yet to be found secret bonus prize.

Dave the Tree ( also known as David Relf ) posted a spirited little limerick and takes out the runners up prize with…..

    There once was a man called Will
    Who wasn't the run of the mill..
    An elephant he rode
    His plumber's crack showed
    My word did he feel like a dill!

To every one else, thanks or entering, to people who didn’t enter, you’re a bunch of slack bastards. I‘ll get in contact with the winners and work out how to get the prize pack. You also have to choose a lucky rock, so I’ll take some better photos of those in Hanoi.

Oh yeah, this evening we take a 23 hour bus ride to Hanoi, Arriving some time tomorrow evening. If some cunt spews on me I’ll fucking stab him. But I’m hoping for a nice relaxing trip the normal dose of chilled tunes, a few beers and some sleeping tablets should make it fairly pain free……

cheers

Vientiane, Laos

Well we Tuk Tuk'ed and kayaked down to Vientiane, It was a nice enjoyable trip, a few bigish rapids but nothing scary. It sure was heaps better then getting spewed on in a local bus. The day before had been really good, we got dropped off up river and kayaked down, the scenery was fucking amazing. Crazy hills jutting out of bright green rice paddies, It was a fairly relaxing and beautiful few hours of paddling. We stopped off to do a quick inner tube mission into a cave, an underwater river. The cave wasn’t amazing but it was still a cool experience floating about in an underwater river is aways gonna have atleast novelty value. We had lunch and then saw the Elephant Cave. The Elephant cave was pretty lame, like if it was at a mates place you would think it was cool, but when a tour guide takes you there it was a bit “oh is this it, ohh, ok” it did have a Buddha statue and stuff in it, and one of the rocks looked a bit like an elephant.
Near the end of the trip we arrived into the area of the river where they do the tubing. The general gist (It’s the main thing people do in Vang Vieng) is you hire an inner tube, get a Tuk Tuk to drop you off up the river a bit, jump in and float down. Of cause one of the greatest things about Laos is Beer Lao, and some of the great places you get to drink it. This is definitely one of them, you get to float down a river with little bars along the way, and each bar has something special to get the tourists in, a big swing, flying fox, or just something high to jump of into the river. The people at the bars have huge bamboo poles they use to help drag people onto dry land so they can drink more Beer Lao. The bar we spent a bit of time at had a fairly good sized flying fox and you could also jump off the platform the flying fox was attached to. It reminded me of down b the river during Earthcore, big stereo, sunny weather and loads of beer. It was fucking cool. I think it takes most people about 4 or 5 hours to do the trip, although that only involves about half an hour of floating time.
I also got to teach an English class that evening as well, it was pretty cool. I was nervous and didn’t really have a lot to say. I did months of the year with the little kids, they were pretty cool, very eager to learn. I started doing telling the time, and clocks and shit with the older ones, but then just talked about Australia and what I’m doing travelling around. Nearly all of them were very shy and didn’t want to ask any questions, but bit by bit a few did. I sorta ran through my answers and wrote them up on the whiteboard and helped explain any of the less common words I had used.
All in all it was very cool, I could really imagine doing a solid two weeks next time I’m in the area. It would be heaps better once you get to know the kids and know what sorta levels they are at.
For the lat few days we have just been chilling out and drinking in Vientiane, we spent a bit of time with an aussie called Kate who we had met kayaking. She is just about to finish 2 years of work in Cambodia, and said it was all pretty amazing there. Mainly we have been drinking at this Mexican bar with Rowena and David from England. A few Beer Lao and then a mission to some other bar for a few more Beer Lao. Today we applied for our Vietnamese visas and then tried to head out to the Beer Lao brewery, but were too late to take a tour. Hopefully we’ll get another chance.
Tomorrow I hope to get a bike nice and earlyish and go motorbike up to the Plain of Jars, I’m thinking I’ll spend the few days it takes for our visas to get processed. It would be nice to be out of the cities for a while.

Cheerio,
Will Cowan

Vang Vieng, Laos

Today we are in Vang Veing, a fairly quite little town, luckily more hustle and bustle than Laung Probang. Laung Probang was nice though, a funny bit of charm but not quite that lively especially this time of year. We did go check out the local waterfall, biggest nicest waterfall I've ever seen, and a wicked walk up the side when you can walk sorta along into the side of the waterfall, getting a bit wet along the way but very very cool. On the way back the bus driver stopped off at a small village with some kids selling wrist bands, it was sorta weird cute but poor and dirty kids, cuts and scabs and stuff I gave them my lucky pen, and some post cards that I had planned to send to people, one with an few elephants and another with some of the northern Thai hill tribe kids (the ones who use the rings to elongate their necks) it was quite cool seeing them blow out at that. It had an odd zoo vibe, weird feeling of helplessness and that we should have been able to help more. Photos here

When we got back from the waterfall we were carted off to the bus station to get the local bus down to Vang Vieng, it all started off fairly well a local told us it was about an 8 hour journey, a smidge longer than the 6 or so the guy who sold us our ticket had said. There was a fairly scruffy plain clothed guy who paced the bus and kept watch up the front, packing an AK47. It was odd, we saw plenty of security guards, ticket inspectors, police and army staff in Thailand, all with the most immaculate uniforms, just to see some dude in his trackie dacks and a rifle under his Nike jacket didn't really fill me with the utmost confidence. Any way, about 45 minutes in, I see the local sitting in the seat in front, fumble with his window, he manages to open it just in time for what was probably a 60/40 split of out the window vs. over the side of his seat and window spew. Sitting right behind him I got a lovely bit of splash back down my legs, and a small cascade over my bag ( laptop camera iPods inside of cause ) hmm not to worry only 8 hours to go…….

The rest wasn't too bad really, I did get a chance to clean up a bit after a few hours, and a tamazapan and plenty of chill tunes on the iPod helped me eventually catch a few Z's. We arrived in the middle of the night in what seemed to be a total ghost town, knocked a few guest house doors until we found one with some one who would wake up stumble over with a key hand it to us, point at a bungalow then head back to bed.

The next morning I scored a wicked mulberry pancake at "The Organic Farm Cafe" a little ( mainly mulberry) but all sortsa other stuff organic farm near town that is heavily involved in some good local projects. Over a cup of local organic mulberry leaf tea, I spied a little advert saying they had after school English lessons up at the community Centre and were asking for volunteers to go help out with a class or two.

I went up to the farm to suss it out, and was told they were happy for me to take a class that afternoon of about 40 five to ten year olds. The young Korean volunteer (who's name I've forgotten) and an Aussie couple who were around 30ish wandered up to the Community Centre, I met three of the kids along the way who spoke the cutest, Hello my name is ….. It is nice to meet you…. English. It was pretty funny, I introduced my self to one, so the others quickly ran over to shake my hand and say hello and introduce them selves.

We waited around and about 25 kids turned up, there were a fair few chunky storm clouds in the sky, and some were dumping rain onto the mountains nearby, the volunteer said that some kids cant get back from class easily if it rains, and that normally more turn up. I was pretty nervous, she pretty much just said, ok get up in front, I'll introduce you to the class, then just teach them some English. I was happy with only 25 and not 40. Any ways, me up in the front writing on the blackboard, "Hello, my name is Will. I am from Australia", and crash, thunder, lightning and the clatter of rain on the tin roof. About half of them were already up and heading for the door, the other quickly writing down what I had written on the black board before doing them same.

Unfortunately that was it for my experience of teaching English in Laos, I'm gonna try and get back there tonight, we have booked some kayaking already and I'm not overly sure I'll get back in time, which sucks 'cos I really would have liked to. I've even though up a bit of a lesson plan now. I think it's a must do next holiday activity, a quick scuba dive down south, a few weeks ( or more ) chilling in Pai, then Laos for some time teaching English here and helping out with the community projects…

I'll let you know how it goes if I get another chance at a lesson…..

Well, I've had had two slightly morbid entries into the competition, keep up the good work, keep em flowing and there is no rule saying only one entry per person….

Cheers.

Will Cowan

Fuck, its been Two Months, We're halfway done

Yesterday we crossed the border from Thailand to Laos (two days after our visas expired), Its crazy to think its been over two months in Thailand. We had a fair blinder of a last night in Pai and on Friday morning we headed to Chiang Mai. Pang, a friend from Pai who was picking up her things from Chaing Mai and moving more permanently to Pai joined us for the weekend. Pai really was fantastic, I managed two weeks there but could have done many many more, relaxed, fun and super super friendly.
Some of my funniest moments would have to be the Vegemite, Marmite, Yellow T-shirt Incident. Chuiwawa’s a funny one, during a conversation Chessy, Irene and I were having regarding the merits of Vegemite and Marmite. We were comparing the similarities of the packaging when I realised that lids were both yellow and probably fitted the other Jar. I tried it out and they did, we had a bit of a laugh and continued with the conversation. Chuiwawa, who had been listening in but didn’t have much to say, (Thai people aren’t that big on the yeast extract) returned back in the room with 2 yellow T-shirts, we looked at the lids, looked at the t-shirts laughed and the girls did a quick swap and put the shits on. Chuiwawa came back in with a t-shirt for me as well, now I’m not sure how or why (we weren’t even exceptionally drunk) but we ended up with a fairly big series of photos of us in the kitchen holding any thing yellow we could find. I still wish I could find out what Chuiwawa had read from the conversation…. Photos are here
Roy’s birthday was a great night, me and Chessy spending a wicked arts and craft arvo. HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROY started of with drawing the letters, then cutting them out with a little Stanley knife, then to just free hand cutting, then just tearing letters out by hand from scraps of crepe paper. To see Francesca and Chessy walking the streets of Pai with a 10 metre long string of giant balloons and a big poster was very very worth it.
It was interesting to be there during some descent flooding as well, some parts of town were waist deep in water. The army came in early that morning helped every one evacuate, the water came through, deposited about 10cms of mud, and then receded. The people came back started cleaning up and submitting forms for financial relief from the government. No hysteria, screaming, running or panicking, people just went about the jobs that needed to be done, helping neighbors and friends when they could. The Main bridge out of town got washed away, and so were a few of the smaller ones up river, If one of you guys from Pai is reading this, let me know how the repair work is going. Photos from the flood and clean up are here.
Roy finally bought a new camera in Chiang Mai and I finally got a hair cut. I’m well impressed with it actually it was a little on the pricier end at 90 baht (around $3). It was great having a local to guide and translate. Just a little off putting when you walk into hair dressers, Pang and the hair dresser have a 10 second private conversation in front of you, both turn to me and nod, so I sit down and she starts chopping at my hair. We also went to a BBQ Buffet, each table has a little charcoal bbq with a ring around the hot plate that you fill with broth. You grab a plate and grab what you want from a big table of raw meats, greens and noodles. You fill the ring with soup chuck a wad of fat on the top of the hotplate and start laying bits of meat around the top. Seafood, greens and noodles go in the soupy stuff and you just graze on what you can cook on this little stove. It really was quite fun.

OK, to celebrate the halfway point of my trip, and to thank all the very cool people I’ve met in Thailand I’m giving any one who reads this, the chance to win one of two great Prize Packs. It’s nice and simple, in 100 words or less do a quick story on an experience you think I’m going to have while traveling. You get extra points if it rhymes, and if it’s a haiku you get an extra prize. So courtesy of me, First Prize (as judged by Me, Roy, and any one we meet when we need to judge this thing) is one unopened pack of L&M Lights, complete with Thai Teeth warning photo, one genuine Hill Tribe friendship bracelet, and a choice of one of the Lucky Rocks that I got from the river during Chuiwawa’s Adventure. Runner Up gets all the same but with out the pack of smokes, I’ll post them any where in the world. Entries close Monday the Tenth of October ( 1 week from today ) and must be posted, in the comments section of www.willcowan.com , or emailed to me. Chogde Kap everyone.


Cheers
Will Cowan
Http://www.WillCowan.com
http://photos.WillCowan.com

Prize Pack

Prize Pack, originally uploaded by Will Cowan.

First Prize is the Ciggies, a Wrist Band and first pick of a lucky rock, runner up recieves a rock of their choice and a wrist band as well.

On another note, i got a new sim card for while I'm in Laos the number is +856207773157.
Keep your eye out for the up an coming "Wife Beater Photo Comp" get your early entries into Wifebeatercomp@willcowan.com stay tuned for more details.

Back in Chiang Mai

Well, after a fairly big piss up last night, we have made it to chiang Mai. As it was Francesca's farwell as well last night Ting Tong house will be all sleepy any quite. I'm back to that feeling I had during the first few weeks in Thailand... is this food poisoning, or a hangover... or both. But all in all fairly good health.
Our visa runs out on Sunday, so today I'll book a flight to Laos for the weekend.
All is well, speak soon.

blergh

Hmmm,
I'm still up in Pai. Pai's is by far my favourite place, nice chilled and friendly. A few nights ago we celebrated Roh's birthday party. ( for those of you who know Roh, you'd know his birthday was a fair while ago ) it was pretty cool, ( for those of you who were there, we do feel sorta bad for being liers, but it was a great night wasn't it ) , Losta free drinks and stuff.

I don't have my camera with me but I'll stick some photos online very soon. Me and Chessy from Ting Tong House made a big colladged poster saying Happy Birthday Roy out of crepe paper on a huge sheet of cardboard. We decorated the Fifty Sitong bar ( aka The Whiskey Bar ) with balloons, very very funny

I'm thinking about having my birthday in a few weeks in Laos somewhere... should be good.

I've spent the last few days fairly bed ridden, Woke up in the middle of the night a few days ago with an urge to vomit, and spent the next few hours vomiting, drinking a little bit of a water, and then spewing it back up again. ( some of them having to be while sitting on the dunny due to a sever case of the shits ) Chessy was very helpful, buying me poweraide ( i think it made me spew 4 times trying to drink that bottle ) I lost 4 kilos in 24 hours ( down to 73.8 kg ) so yesterday i ate a little, and today a few bits of bread in the arvo. This evening i managed about 1/4 a serve of spaghetti.If i still feel like crap tomorrow I spose i'll drop in at teh hospital.

umm, Nicky, keep on trucking the crap stuff just makes you enjoy the good stuff even more, you should see what dramas curt and Celias are up to and they are only a week in.... Curt and Cecil, congrats and have a wicked time, Chessy, Sorry for lieing about Roy's birthday, but I'm sure you forgive us (( i hope I leave town before she reads this )) Jackie, let me know how your continuing travels are, I'll see in London, and Finn, was wicked meeting you I know youve only got this website for contact so leave a comment and I'll come for a beer when I head to germany.

cheers every one...

Will C

Chewawa’s Adventure

Well yesterday was fucking wicked. Chuiwawa ( got to find out how to spell that properly ) is Tutu ( the owner of the Ting Tong ) brother, he lives at the guest house and works at the bar. This morning after breakfast ( vegemite on toast and scrambled eggs ) he asks me and Francesca if we want to go on an adventure, no more info…. So I jump on my bike and follow them out of town ( a quick double back when he runs out of petrol ) a few little turns off the main road and its onto a fairly tight little dirt/gravel road. As with standard tradition the further off the beaten track you get the thinner the road becomes, the longer the grass in between the tracks and the bigger the puddles. It all starts off fairly smoothly Chuiwawa and Francesca on a very clapped out rusty old dirt bike and me on my little 125cc Honda scooter. After about 15 minutes the puddles start to stretch out and join one another they become pits of mud with huge trenches carved through them from who ever was game enough to take a 4wd up there. At stages a foot deep puddle stretches to 20 meters. I fell like the description really should be some what poetic and action packed. Sweat dripping from sun burnt skin, the sting of grass whipping against my feet, the burn of hitting a pool of hot muddy water, that sorta thing but I’m not poetic so I won’t try. But it was fucking exhilaratingly exciting, I managed 3 fucking river crossings and slipping and sliding though monster mud pits on the scooter. Chuiwawa and Francesca both manage to loose Thongs ( Flip-Flops) in the mud, and in the “ I’ve narrowed it down to a metre square patch where they have to be but still cant find them its so deep” sorta way. We ride for about a hour up this crazy track, until it peters out over a river then into about a foot wide path through a rice paddy, Chuiwawa’s response is, “We stop now, looking for waterfall, but now lost, you want shower in river then we go home” Seriously these guys are just like big kids, play all day then work and drink at their bar at night. The have such a wicked lifestyle. So any way we chill out in this river, I collect a few nice looking rocks and we make a mission back down the path.

All in all a very fun morning, the night before I had asked Tutu what cooking school he would recommend, he looks at me all stern for asking a stupid question, but excitingly says “whaaat, you don’t need cooking school, you see, the house has kitchen and look you look at me, I’m Thai I can cook Thai food I will teach you to cook great Thai food, tomorrow we go to the market and then we cook in our kitchen, what do you want to eat” it was a very cool moment. So in the evening, Tuk comes round to the guest house we make a mission down to the market and buy ingredients, I was pretty firm with the “ I’ll buy you teach” but he kept chipping in for bits and pieces, we cooked up a Green Curry with chicken, fried veggies with tofu and a big omelet. It was fucking great.

Jackie ( an Aussie ) and Finn ( a German ) who we had met last night at the bar rocked up as organized. We jumped back on our bikes and headed to a little nearby village for a Chinese full morn celebration, it was like a little school fete with kids doing badly choreographed dances and old dudes doing traditional stuff. It was nicely entertaining, in a lame sorta way. Followed by a drunken bar hopping night, Ting Tong, Bebop, Bamboo and then finished off at The Crazy Chicken. Fun and games my friends, fun and games.

Will Cowan

Well Ive left Chiang Mai

Well, I've left Chiang Mai, and had a really good few days on a Hill Tribe Trek. I'm now spending a bit of time in Pai while Roy does his Mui Thai stuff in Chiang Mai. The Trek was really quite surprising fun.

Hey, I'm gonna be really super super lazy on this one..... if you wanna quick read about the trek ( and you should cos it was cool ) check Laura's Travel Journal http://www.livejournal.com/users/laurainasia/ she was the other aussie on the trip and gives it a pretty nice run down......

Photos are online at http://photos.willcowan.com/tags/hilltribe

cheerio

ps. this is what happens when you spend a week in Pai, you have a blast but manage to let a few things slip..... its very very relaxing

A Few New Photos Online

Panoramic Kho Phi Phi 4
Originally uploaded by Will Cowan.

Hey guys,

Just a quick note that I stitched together some of my Panoramic images I've been taking over here. For those who want to see what Kho Phi Phi was like about a month ago, there is a few from there.

To check them out just follow the link below.... Once you click on an image click the little "All Sizes" magnifying glass to see it at a decent size.

http://photos.willcowan.com/tags/panoramic

enjoy.

--
Http://www.WillCowan.com

Kanchanabury to Chiang Mai

Hey,
Well we made it to Chiang Mai, a mini bus to Bangkok then an overnight bus up here, not to bad a trip. The mini bus was sorta funny, running on Thai time, it was a bit over a hour late and filled with 8 Thais with the little telly going with dodgy Thai pop karaoke. The night bus was OK, it leaked a little but we got to it night and early and got the front seats on the top level with loads of leg room. Comfort factor was reasonable and a few of Roy's sleeping pills made a fairly nice nights sleep.
There are a few photos online from Kanchanabury here
It was really worth going to, the hellfire pass memorial was set up by the Veterans affairs dept of Australia so it was probably the cleanest building I've been in for a good few weeks. There was a nicely done audio tour with commentary and accounts by survivors.
We also went to a fairly impressive set of waterfalls, forgotten their name but there was about 7 seperate areas along the river, the coolest thing was the fish. There are some photos of them on the site, heaps and heaps of fish swimming around near the edge of the pools. When ever you stayed still in the pool they swim up towards you and nibble the dead skin off you, its super creepy.
Next week I'm heading to Pi for a mountain tour trek, should be interesting and i think I'll stay up there for a few extra days.

Cheerio

Goodbye Bangkok, again.

We just arrived in Kanchangabury, its very well known for its Bridge over the River kwae, It's part of the Burma Railway, where tens of thousands of prisoners of war ( and about 100 000 civilians ) were worked to death to build the railway. So it will be a few museums and cemeteries this arvo and tomorrow. We're still a little hungover from last night in Bangkok, I'm sitting on a nice big grassy patch of the place we are staying. Just finished a nice little spicey chicken on rice stirfry ( clocked in at just under a dollar ) Our place is right on the river and very close to the bridge there is this little boat towing a massive big barge. The barge is sorta decked out to look like a steam train, and its packed full of Thais singing bad asian music on a big loud speaker. It's quite a sight.

Last night we were drinking with Paddy and Celeste ( Paddy accidentally ordered deep fried chicken knees for dinner, weird grissley and crunchy ) and tried to go see a Ping Pong show, and this crazy fucking tuk tuk driver zigged and zagged the back streets like a fucking mad man, propper rally driving style, us pissed yahooing in the back. That went on for a fair while until he blew up something in his tuk tuk and with a decent sized cloud of smoke and some bad noises we had to leave him and jump in another tuk tuk. We were to late to see eh ping pong shows, the only place open was like 400 bhat to get into ( about $12 ) so we headed home, this time the tuk tuk driver was a bit slower, but had perfected the art of doing monoes, so at the lights we'ld take of with a screech a little cloud of smoke and with 4 of us in this little 3 wheeled van, up on its back wheels on a 45 degree angle.



Lotsa fun,-- Http://www.WillCowan.com

One Month

Well fuck, it’s been a month, and we are back at our starting pint of Bangkok. We finished up our diving course a few days ago, and made the ferry and then bus ride back up north, another fairly monstrous day of relatively comfortable travel only spoilt by the movies provided of Miss Congeniality 2 and Racing Stripes.

Well I had a quick chat with Nicky this morning, she was at the Sydney airport, a little scared and scattered, and she’s a little trooper and will have no issues having a good time over there. So many of the people we have met over here have been traveling alone, they’ve said it's been great. Only a few of them have had issues, but that was mainly the quite ones so there’s not much chance of Nicky fitting that category. So understand the fear of the unknown, but through SE Asia at least there are a heap of lone travelers all having a blast.

**UPDATE** Just got off the phone again with Nicky, her flights been delayed so she has been put up in a hotel in New Zealand for the night....... **UPDATE**

I was really hoping to do some great big round up of all the exciting and entertaining things we’ve been up to, but I’m on holiday and can’t be bothered. It is funny some of the things I miss from back home, love and/or hate over here. It’s been hot and sticky I haven’t worn a single jumper or pair of pants since I got here, I really wish I didn’t bring so much shit, I’m at the point of starting to dump things. I had a pretty damn full bag when I left and now with the shit I‘ve been buying space need to be made. Today was by far the biggest purchase, and I‘m now sitting in my room typing up this email from my shiny new laptop. I managed not to go too far over budget but was pretty tempted by some very fancy equipment. It is nice though. I’m in the process of organizing my music and photos ( and I can nab music off other peoples iPods now ) I was considering holding out till I got to china but it will be nice having this around for the next few months. Today I’m gonna try and get one of the annoying Bangkok suit makers to whip me up a little case for it to stop all the dirt and shit from my bag fucking it up.

We’ve been staying at some pretty touristy places, so being able to order western food hasn’t been hard, its just once you get it in front of you, you realize it’s a pretty strange bastardization of what you would expect, Weird little hot dogs with your bacon and eggs. No bacon, just weird ham stuff with your bacon and eggs. To this date either Outback bar in Kho Pha Ngan or Choppers of Kho Tao have been the only ones to do something you would consider real bacon eggs, and did them friggen well.

I love the beer over here, well at least I dig the prices and love the wide availability of it. Every street vender, bar, restaurant, convenience store and even chemists sell beer. Chang ( a bit cheap and nasty ) you can often pick up for about $1.50 a long neck. Singa ( quite a good drop ) you would get a stubby in a convenience store for $1.50 or a bar for a smidge over $2.

I think it was in Phuket where I first saw beer in a chemist, only bettered by the fact that Roy had bought his pack of ciggies that day from a chemist, oh yeah that’s another thing a pack of ciggies is only $1.20 - $2, so while I’m considering making a bit of an effort to cut down a bit it is had not to smoke when its so cheap.

I don’t quite know if I’ve said it enough, but scuba was wicked. Really really wanna get into it a bit more

I miss doing nice regular firm poos in nice clean toilets, I also miss trough lollies, all we over here is moth balls, not even a hint of lemony freshness. I’ve only spent a bit of time feeling crook. I had a pretty decent case of gravy bum for the first and last full days I spent in Kho Tao, but apart from that I’ve been OK.

Some of my favorite foods I’ve eaten were the weird little taco things when we first got to Bangkok, still no idea what were in them but it was good and some pork skewers that in a drunken stupor were absolutely fantastic. I’ve had some great Thai soups and curries from lots of different places. Surprisingly good Pizzas, the Italian place in Kho Phi Phi was great. I think some of the only foods that I haven’t liked are the ones that made me sick, and at the time they weren’t too bad.

I’m really looking forwards to Laos, every one who’s been there has said its great off the beaten track adventures its cheap dirty and fun. It’s off to Kan Chan A Bury ( no idea how to spell it yet ) then up to Chang Mai.

Well I hope your all doing well, send me an email, tell me what you’re up to……


“Go Nicky woohooo”

Will Cowan.

Kho Toa, and Scuba Diving

Heya,

Well we've just finished our Open Water Certification, it was fucking fun, Finished up today with an 18 metre dive. Moray Eels and Angel Fish and stuff, was very fun. I've managed to stay off the piss fairly well here due to the diving, apart from the first night, where I sustained a double "dodgy pork" and "too much beer" injury and spent the day in bed. I spent most of the first night at a Dragon Bar talking to the owner who's an expat who grew up in the Fitzroy area, it was nice to talk about home for a while. It did mean that I was a day behind Roh, but with one of his drinking benders finaly catching up with him, we re-synced fairly quickly. Today a guy with a Video Camera tagged along so we just bought the video of the days activities, It's on DVD, so i prolly wont be able to get a copy of it online until I get to UK, but it was pretty cool. Roy did the happy dance underwater. Tomorrow we start the Advanced Open Water Course, diving past about 25 metres means the Nitrogen in the tank starts to get you high, I'm guessing its quite similar to doing Nangs. But all teh instructors says its a heap of fun. We also do a Night dive, and two specialty dives. We have picked Advanced Buoyancy Control, and Photography. So I'll stick a heap of photos from our adventures underwater online in the next few days.

We ( as expected ) have started to slip on our schedule a little bit, we were planing to go down south a bit more to Malaysia but have officially ditched that idea, and are also considering pushing Sri Lanka Back a little so we get more time here, and less time in Beijing.

For those of you having any issues looking at photos, use teh TAGS option if you go http://photos.willcowan.com/tags/thailand you go all my uploaded Thailand photos use
http://photos.willcowan.com/tags/bangkok for bangkok photoshttp://photos.willcowan.com/tags/khophangan for the full moon party photos and, http://photos.willcowan.com/tags/khotoa for diving photos.

Hope every one is doing really well, congrats to Dave for selling Jerry ( we will miss you Jerry have a safe and happy journey ) speak to you soon

Will Cowan
Mob. +6651141951

Full Moon Shenanigans

Well what a full on couple of days, Kho Pha-Ngan was a blast... Big drunken nights nearly every night, occasionally followed by trippy mornings on magic mushies at the Mellow Mountain Bar. The beach is pretty huge, its got about 5 or 6 main bars, house, hard house,R 'n' B, Drum & Bass and stuff. In front and between all the bars are the Bucket Stalls the prices went up a little on full moon night, from $3 a bucket to $4 . At the water line in front of most of the bars there are fire twirling shows, Some of it a fair bit better than what I saw at Phi Phi, and that was friggen wicked back there. I don't have my memory card with me but I should get some time tomorrow to stick photos online. I know I'll try and work another full moon party into my trip some time soon, It turned out the night before full moon was the most fun ( not so fucking busy )
We shared a place with Deb and Val, and caught up with some other people we had met at Phi Phi, and ofcause in our drunked stupors met a whole bunch of new friends aswell.
Today me Roy and Deb caught a boat to Kho Tao and Val headed back up towards Bangkok. Deb's been here earlier in her trip, and is booking a bungalow for a full month. Me and Roy have booked in to a dive school and they've organised fairly cheap accom for the week for us.
I'm really looking forwards to doing the scuba thing, It really seems like one of those things you can get hooked on, its relatively cheap its costing us 9000 bhat, which is $290 au for a 4 day course. Once you finish you get your Open Water Certificate, so you can dive any where in the world, so that's very cool.
I wish i had an underwater case for my camera, but i spose I'll jsut buy a disposable underwater one, the diving here is ment to be wicked.

any way,
I hope every one is doing well....
cya

Koh pha ngan

My god this place shall now be officially dubbed the land of the hundred bhat bucket. Small hip flask of whisky can of coke and little redbull bottle. For 3 bucks. was a 11 hour journey of multiple buses and boats. But it was worth it. Saturday is full moon party night. Bring it on

We Made It Back

Well we made it back. Val nearly spewed Deb nearly shat herself. And while trying to scale a cliff face to jump off I ripped small chunks of flesh from my hand and foot. The scenery is blissful, beautiful emerald oceans sandy beaches and wicked big cliffs. Although the cuts and bumps are quickly advancing my injury list, I'm having a great time. I've now got sunburnt back of legs, face shoulders, upper and lower arms, I also managed a descent elbow burn a few days ago and today while snorkeling gave my self a scarlet lower back. Roy is finally retired for an early night. But the nearly full bottle of $7 rum coke Redbull and a deck of uno cards say he could be convinced otherwise. The girls are scubaing tomorrow I'm really jealous. But I'm planning to get my scuba license some time in the next few weeks. Hope every ones having at least half as much fun as I am. WillCowan

Little Phi Phi for snorkeling Cliff Jumping and that sort of thing

Well I've realised that the internet is to expensive on this island. And posting from my phone is cheaper. I managed to catch the fire show at hippies again last night. Roy as he is now affectionately known stayed on and stumbled through the door at about 7am. So this morning five becomes four and me Val Deb and a Canadian named Desmond are on a fishing boat on our way to little phi phi for snorkeling cliff jumping and general shenanigans. I'll let you know how it goes.

My god its a tough life

IMG_6956
Originally uploaded by Will Cowan.

Phi Phi Island

Well, We've had a really cruisey good few days. Not up to much..
Really getting into the daily list of where to eat drink and sleep. Any thing else and we feel like we have a busy day on our hands ( and normally get to the drinking part and forget to do it ) I really struggle to imagine what this place used to look like pre-tsunami. Patong beach looked pretty normal, allot of construction work and a few shabby streets. This place is still pretty screwed up. Yesterday I volunteered for some clean up work. Sorting all the shit the drivers pull out of the bay. And doing maintains work on a pontoon they have been using. It was good fun met a heap of nice people and got a fucker of a work out. Managed to burn two more parts of my body.. i now have sunburnt calves, and elbows. I lost a layer of skin on my shoulders a few days ago but am trying to keep up with a layer of sunscreen every few minutes. I've stuck few photos onto Flickr but internet is a bit pricey here so haven't put all of them there yet.... ( some day after I've find a good place to eat drink and sleep I'll get around to it ) the beaches are nice here the water is beautiful. We made friends with to other travelers one is Val, from San Francisco a funny 1/2 Chinese 1/2 American who's been traveling by her self for about 5 months, She's a prescription queen and been telling us about all the great opiates of Laos. The other is Deb who's Welsh and also been traveling by her self for a fair while, i think they both met in Malaysia. There is a party for the people who have volunteered on the island on Sunday so we'll go to that and then think about heading to a different island. Tomorrow we actually manage to get off the main phi phi island and do a boat tour of the little island and do some cliff jumping......
One of the main bars on the island is "Hippies Bar" its not overly cheap but its very popular, they had the BEEEEST fire show I've ever seen.. Once i get some proper internet I'll stick some videos such good Poi work has to be seen to be believed.

to check out Thailand Photos

http://flickr.com/photos/willcowan/tags/Thailand/

should get you there, its not complete and not in order but it shows a fair bit of them...
I should have the photos properly set up some time in the next few days, and fill in a few of the blanks from this posting..... cya all then..

Will Cowan

The Phuket Islands

IMG_6803
Originally uploaded by Will Cowan.

damn these looks so beuatiful, Tomorrow we are heading to Phi Phi island.. should be great.

Phuket Town Markets

IMG_6812
Originally uploaded by Will Cowan.

hopefully in a few months when my stomach has toughened up I'll be able to eat some of this, until then sticking to the stuff we see cooked fresh.... it looked and smelt fantastic.

Phuket town, day two

Last night we had dinner with Roh's old man and his partner. A really nice meal at the resort they're staying at around the other side of the island. Damn taxi over there was 300 bhat that's ten bucks. I think that was the clinching moment. Today I payed up the 150 bhat. And hired a motor bike for the day. Zipped around all day. Fucking heap of fun. Rode up a few mountains across the island and back again. Even did a lap of the exercise circuit I found. Few pushup situps and we're heading back to do it again Tomorrow, after that we're thinking about both getting them and circumnavigating the whole island. Also today I got a bit of sun. Enough you can see the straps of my bag and necklace. I doubt it will peel but I'll be nice and careful tomorrow. We'll be based in Patong tomorrow so I'll check my email and chuck a few photos online also if I can post here from something better than my phone it would make it easier. I hope every one is doing well. WillCowan

Stupid farangs

Im sure mel will think this one is the funniest. It's twenty past seven. We're sitting on the airport to khoh shan road bus. Having, in a still drunken stupor managed to sleep through the first hour of our 5am alarm. Today we had planned a flight to phuket. And crashed out around 3 o'clock last night having set the some what unattainable target of a 7am flight. So now we are trying to sober up we're on the bus back to our hotel to pick up the Shit i forgot to bring with me (memory card for camera, and that sorta thing) getting painkillers and then make the trip back out to the airport. The good news in this story is bangkok air (my new favorite airline) were kind enough to let up on the next flight with no extra charge, i was truely expecting to have waxed au$80 for the flight and expecting to have to say an extra 100 or so for the next flight. Last night was another night of drunken fun. Down to phuket for a bit to re roh's old man them up north later on. Cheers will 'farang' cowan

Day two

Well yesterday was a fucking blast. Getting in so early ofcause we could only hold off on drinking til about eleven. i got my phone set up now that i'm able to post this update right from my phone, so expect random updates will i sit in bars or on busses. I've forgotten what i wrote here yesterday but some of the highlights were cowboy's springdale bucket. A jug with two shots each of baileys kaluha tia maria baccardi and topped up with milk, if thats not the correct recipie, hopefuly duncan will correct me in the comment section below. Well we are gonna chill out in bangkok for another day and head up to changmai tomorrow. Should be fun and games. I expect tonight should remain a little more chilled than last night. Catch you later.

Bangkok, Thailand

Fuck we made it, it's actually happened we are currently sitting in a little bar of khe san road in Bangkok. Our 9 and and a half hour flight wasn't to shabby, only disrupted by an incredibly drunk Swedish girl. We got in just before sun-up at around 5ish this morning by the time we had got out through customs and organized a taxi it was getting fairly light and starting to warm up. It's shifted from sorta dry to drizzle and a fair bit of rain and now I think its back to dry. We ended up making friends with Kat ( the drunkard ) her Swedish friend and a cowboy named Duncan, we are sharing a room today as they are catching their Swedish connecting flight at about 1am tonight. I'm already getting accustomed to the hot sticky stench of south east Asia, had a great 30 bhat sweat and sour pork with some sort of poached egg ( maybe poached in oil ) breakfast. My stupid shorts that I got fixed in Brisbane broke already and are getting fixed by a little lady with a sewing machine.

Its hit beer o'clock at around 11am, I'm not really sure how the rest of the day has in plan for us, cowboy has a big bottle of Bundy, and there has been talk of it rearing its ugly head some time soon. Tomorrow I think we catch the train to phuket to catch up with Ro's old man. It sounds like a descent amount of time on the train....... Should be interesting. Any ways I do have a Thai sim card now... I believe the number is +6651141951 so drop me a call or text any time you want to know how hot sweaty stinky drunk lost or wet me and Roh are.

So I hope your all having nearly as much fun as I'm having now, keep me updated with your news and gossip.

I'll try and have some phots online soon.

Over and Out

Will Cowan.