the daddy of all travel days

so i realised last night that i only have 10 days left, 2 of which will be taken up travelling between kolkata and mumbai so i hurriedly bought a boat and bus ticket from koh tao to bangkok and booked a flight to kolkata for tomorrow morning! aaaah! i've had a cracking week chilling on the beach with jaclyn and karen, eating lush food and getting tipsy but the holiday is over now... it's time for grime, filth, squalor and hassle again before i come home.

i bumped into becky again on the khao san road last week before i went back to koh tao which was nice, exchanging more tales before we jumped on our overnight bus. yay, we were sat next to loud drunk germans who'd just landed and were over-tired and over-excited.... great. when we got there i chilled out a LOT and met some incredibly cool people - for the first 2 nights it was new york, manchester, 2x canada and a guy from los angeles called leaf (i shit you not....) and it was great, drinking cocktails with the sea lapping our calves and dancing and talking and having fun. i saw some thai boxing which was great, the first couple of fights were weird as i'm not really that big a fan of 2 blokes twatting hell out of each other so i looked on in sick fascination for a while until i saw the technique and concentration these guys needed to just stay conscious and i slowly got into the swing - by the end i was yelling and screaming with everyone else. it was like something out of a movie, the thais were all hanging around the canvas screaming and waving their betting slips and at the end one guy who had obviously lost a wodge of cash leapt on the canvas and started kicking off at the referee and the judges, it was all very surreal (and i managed to capture it on video which was a bonus!)

so yeah, i'm back in bangkok now, slap bang in the middle of the daddy of all travel days. took a boat from koh tao at 10:15 this morning, bus from chumphon at 13:00 with no ac and more loud germans which arrived at 21:00 in bangkok. now i need to traipse across town (stopping for street pad thai - yum) to get my mini-backpack that's in storage and try to somehow consolidate my thailand gear and my india gear and then get a taxi at 6am to the airport tomorrow for a flight to kolkata. travelling's hard work i tells ya!

a day trip to singapore

my big bag was in singapore and i needed to get it so karen and i jumped on a plane and did singapore for 18 hours. karen was like a kid in a sweetshop, the shopping in singapore is like nowhere else on the planet and she went nuts!

the original plan (if i didn't come home) was to go back to india yesterday, but i'm staying in thailand until april 6th now. i'm having a great time again. i'm not lonely any more and i've recently realised that my concept of "home" no longer exists so the homesickness has pretty much gone away. there's no more claire and i, anna and baz don't live next door to us any more, adam and geoff don't live around the corner now, the rampant is no longer our local. there's no more victoria park for us. it was the best 5 years of my life, we did everything together, we were like a family. i'm sad to say goodbye to that but i'm hap

py that i get to make a clean start when i get home and just because we no longer live within spitting distance of one another doesn't mean our friendships will suffer, it just means "nipping over to geoff's" will take half an hour rather than 2 minutes.

so, i'm in bangkok again and we're heading for some beach fun. the main islands in the gulf of thailand are all very different. koh samui is benidorm, koh pha ngan is ibiza and koh tao is paradise. we all quite fancy learning to dive so we're going to koh tao. ordinarily i'd be "but i've been there already let's go somewhere else" but this place is seriously beautiful. remember the old bounty adverts? it's like that there. plus i get to retake all my photos as they were on the camera that got stolen. then we're going to island hop back to the mainland, koh pha ngan, koh samui and then up to koh phi phi. it should take maybe 2 weeks and will be great. then i need to get up to bangkok to catch a plane back to india, i think i'll go to kolkata and then catch the train to mumbai as i adore travelling on the indian railway and i think it will be a wonderful way to say goodbye to india. i'll meet with kim and hannah and then it's hometime.

i have 17 days left - man this trip has flown past. there's been good times, dark times, frustrating times and moments of pure joy. i have learnt so much about the person i am and met some amazing people along the way. i'm so glad that i'm not alone any more, 2 1/2 months of solo travel was enough i think and if i hadn't met up with karen and jaclyn i would have come home early with my memories tainted by the feelings of sadness and loneliness i was experiencing toward the end. they have been my travel saviours and i love them so much for it.

back in bangkok for some canadian fun

so... i met up with karen and jaclyn yesterday evening. after jumping up and down squealing like schoolgirls we had some lush food and a wander around to catch up and talk about our experiences on the road. i instantly felt better about being here. all of a sudden i didn't feel like the sad loser walking up and down khao san on his own, i didn't feel like the only person in this stream of travellers. i had people to talk to, people to party with. they are doing their level best to convince me to stay on for the full term and go home from mumbai as planned but i'm still not 100% sure i'll do that. i'm still tired of living out of a bag, wearing the same clothes, and not having my friends and family and stuff around me - i'm still homesick. the good thing is that the loneliness has pretty much evaporated since being with them, which is the biggest thing that's been getting me down. they are wonderful, bubbly, lovely people and we took up where we left off in bengaluru - you know how when you go and see a friend who you haven't seen in years and nothing has changed, you just slip back into conversation and goodtimes? well that's kind of what has happened over the last 24 hours with karen and jaclyn, and i feel so much better for having met up with them. so watch this space...

today has been cool. it started with me introducing the girls to boot's the chemist (there's a branch on the khao san) and they were just a tiny amount excited about the place. i think i'll have to make them up boot's christmas hampers each year as karen in particular came out laden with handcreams and bodywashes and stuff with a big grin on her face. we then took a walk around and saw some monuments, temples, palaces and a big swing (photos to follow, the usb thingy is in my room) which took us most of the afternoon. it has been hot, thirsty work as it is so so humid here at the moment so we have just returned from some nice airconditioned starbucks goodness.

so.. yeah.... don't know what i'm going to do with myself. i feel re-invigorated and much happier about being away, but i still miss home tremendously and know that i need my life back pretty soon. maybe i'll stay here for a few days and then still come home earlier than planned. maybe i'll get enough of my motivation back to have a week in bengal before going to mumbai, or maybe i'll stay here and do the southern islands before going to mumbai at the start of april. who knows?

chiang mai, davina, david and the gibbon experience

i met up with taj again in bangkok and this time he brought cassilis and nemocaca who i also know through playing warcraft. we had a top afternoon sitting and eating cakes talking geek to each other which was great.

i've been in chiang mai for a couple of days with my good friends from university, davina and david. the bus trip from bangkok was hellish, it took 10 hours and the airconditioning was broken so it was like being in a sauna and there was condensation dripping on me from above the whole way through. it was horrid. on arrival i checked into my little guesthouse and had a good long sleep before heading over to where davina and david were staying. it was so great to see them and we had lots of stories to exchange over our food - they have travelled through hong kong, vietnam, laos and cambodia and will head south now ending up in australia before they go and do south america. they're away for a year and will pretty much see everything!

yesterday was one of the coolest days ever, we went on a trip to do the gibbon experience. it was awesome,we basically spent the day whizzing through the trees on zip wires screaming and giggling like little schoolchildren. it was bloody fantastic. we had some lovely food last night and now davina and david have headed off to pai. i have 3 hours to kill before i go back to bangkok this evening. i hope the airconditioning works on this bus it's so ridiculously hot and sticky today!

now we come to something pretty big. i think i'm going to come home this weekend. like i said in my last entry i've been homesick for so long, as long as i can remember actually, and i think i'm done with travelling for now. i've been such a lucky person and i feel privileged to have had the opportunity to travel around and experience new cultures and see some of the most beautiful, amazing things the world has to offer but enough is enough. i'm tired of living out of a rucksack, wearing the same 3 sets of clothes, always moving around and most importantly i'm done with being alone. i know that i have met people and travelled with others but i miss my friends, my family, my stuff, my manchester, my everything. being alone for the last 3 months has helped me work out a lot about the person i am and what i want from life. this has been a real experience for me and certainly one that i needed but yeah, i think i'm done. i want a routine again, to get up and go to work and to have a life. i think that's been the most important realisation for me on this trip as before i came away that was the last thing that i wanted - i was fed up of the 9 to 5, fed up of england and now i want that back.

i hope in years to come i won't regret this decision, which is why i haven't booked my ticket yet. i'll mull it over for a couple of days and make the final decision in singapore. i know that i will return to india so i'm not too worried about missing calcutta, darjeeling, varanasi and so on as i will definitely see them in the future.

so yeah, that's where i'm at right now :D

back in bangkok

i have just spent a fantastic 5 or 6 days lolling on a beach in paradise. not much to report there really apart from "i sat on the beach and ate lush food" which was exactly what the doctor ordered. shame i won't get to show you any photos of it as on my first night back in bangkok i was robbed of my camera and mobile phone. how on earth it happened i don't know, my bag is pretty secure and i didn't notice anything untoward. it's a massive pain in the arse as whilst i have insurance it will take 2 months for them to get the money to me so i've had to dip into some non-travelling money to buy a new bloody camera. and i've been used to having two 4gig memory cards and now i'm reduced to 1 measly gigabyte of storage :( very angry david....

now i don't know what to do next. part of me really wants to come home to the uk as i have been homesick for as long as i can remember now and this has just added to that. part of me wants to go back to india to get away from all the bloody travellers - harriet in singapore said that from the second i got off the plane at bangkok i would join a conveyor belt of travellers and i wouldn't get off it until i landed back in india - and she was so right! david and davina are in chiang mai which was kind of on my list so i might go and see them tomorrow after lunch with taj and cass (my warcraft friends) for a couple of days before coming back to bangkok to meet jaclyn and karen on the 19th. i have a flight booked to singapore on the 21st and i need to sort out a flight back to india from there.

i really want to go to kolkata next but that will mean an extra day in singapore which i don't know if i can be arsed with - once i leave thailand i want to be back in india asap - and the only regular flights seem to be to chennai. i guess that will be ok as i wanted to do the 30 hour chennai > kolkata train anyways. oh well, i guess as always i'll just see what happens!

going to spend today going around the sights i went around before koh tao so i can re-take all the bloody photos i've lost. what an arse :(

koh tao

yeah, i'm in paradise :D

i'll post more later

bangkok

bangkok's a bit weird. i'm staying near the khao san road which if you've seen the beach (gakk) is where leonardo di caprio drinks the snake blood. it's a nightmare here, the place is teeming with people my brother's age getting munted. 10 years ago andy and i would have been in our element but i'm a bit past that now and it's not really the place for a solo traveller as there's a lot of attitude kicking around and trying to meet people is pretty hard. if you take yourself away from this area though bangkok is a cool, vibrant, clean and modern city with plenty to see and do. there are temples and palaces all over the place and the shopping malls are huge. i went on the mrt and skytrain today and they were spotless, quick and cheap. it's incredibly hot and muggy here but everything's airconditioned so if it gets too sticky it's easy to nip into somewhere and freeze up for a second before heading back out into it.

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last night i had dinner with a friend from my game called taj who is from bangkok. we had a great evening sat opposite the wat arun (which was beautifully lit up from across the river) eating pad thai and talking about all kinds of stuff. he studied in nottingham so his english is pretty perfect (and he didn't call me duck which i was impressed at) so we could talk about a whole range of things without the language barrier being a problem.

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tonight i head to koh tao and it looks bloody beautiful. 15 hours on a bus and ferry - pah! that's nowt :D

singapore slings, the 73rd floor and a cable car ride

we had another bimble yesterday doing various things until mid-afternoon when becky left for thailand. we were all sad to see her go and if you're reading this becky we've had a poo time since you left and everything that follows is a big fat lie....

so after saying farewell we finally went to the raffles hotel for some singapore slings, joined by a lovely lass called harriet who had been working at the prince of wales for the last month and is now heading for india (loaded down with good advice from us of course...) and an irish chap called owen who left today for new zealand on a 2 year working visa. the cocktails were horrendously overpriced but i'm chuffed to bits as they are one of my favourite drinks ever and were made of yum. the place was fabulous and reeked of money - the drinks were S$22 each which works out to about 7 quid. after the cocktails we had a wander around the hotel complex before heading up to a viewing gallery on the 73rd floor of a nearby skyscraper to be gobsmacked by the view of the singapore skyline at night. the elevator was pretty rapid, arriving in about 10 seconds or so and our ears popped like crazy. there were a few gorgeous bars and restaurants up there with full length windows for us to look out of and it was yet another thing that has taken my breath away on this trip. it was like something from the future (in fact most things here have been..) and a hush fell over us as we stood and stared at the beautiful skyline before us.

after that we headed to clarke quay for a sit down and a beer in a mock-up of a scottish log cabin complete with kilt-clad singaporean waiters and waitresses. which was bizzare. a bit later on we were joined by two crazy girls from our hostel and were talked at for the best part of an hour before repairing to a snazzy nightclub for a bop. the nightclub was one of the swankiest places i have ever been in ever, the dj was one of the worst dj's i have ever heard ever ever and the girls walked in on the middle of a catfight in the ladies loos - finally something untoward about singapore! pete has been looking for some dark side to this perfect city and hadn't been having much luck and this cheered him up immensely. apparently there was lots of hitting in the face with shoes going on...

today has been a very good day indeed. we took the cable car over to santosa island which is this weird theme park off the coast (the cable car was a tiny amount scary) so we could ride on the downhill luge thing. you're basically in a cross between a luge and a go-kart and left to barrel your way down a long hill with twists and curves before coming back up on one of those ski chairlift thingys. i of course had 2 gos.

tonight is the last night with pete and anna. i'll be sad to say goodbye they have been the perfect travelling companions - uber-chilled and immensely funny - and this week in singapore (with becky as well) has been one of the best. the four of us will undoubtedly meet up again and share more goodtimes but it won't be singapore. what a lovely week :D

thailand tomorrow afternoon.

singapore

i had some yoga and reiki in kochi which was nice. one thing the chappie said after he sorted out my shoulder issues (bloody hard beds grrr...) was that i was bad at making decisions, and that i should try to make more decisions without umming and aahing too much. so while i was getting a haircut i decided to go to singapore earlier than planned and have a mooch around.

so here i am :D i got on the same flight as becky which was nice. our rikshaw ride to the airport was rather an ordeal - we broke down a couple of times, they tried to get us to buy their petrol, and the "one hour one hour only" turned into 90 odd minutes. we were then refused entry to the airport as becky's ticket had the wrong date on it (she was due to fly a few days before but ended up staying in kochi) so we had a bit of a palaver trying to get her a new ticket for our ticketless airline, and then after checking in we saw our flight was delayed until 3am... 4 hours away.... we did alright out of it to be honest, a few 50p heinekens from duty free, comfy chairs, my blanket and a bag of mini twixes and we were sorted.

we landed in singapore yesterday morning and headed to little india which is where most of the backpackers are, found a hostel after traipsing a while and trying a couple which were full and then went for a beer to calm ourselves and to make decisions about where to stay for the remainder of the singapore stay and so on. we went to a pretty obviously backpacker-y pub / hostel called the prince of wales and bumped into pete and anna, 2 people we had seen a couple of times at kochi airport having issues at customs (they arrived in india using a land border which seemed to confuse the hell out of the airport staff) and we had also bumped into them a couple of times on the way from the airport. we sat and had a bit of a session that lasted into the wee hours, had plenty of laughs, saw a singaporean jazz band, had some awful burgers and chatted to a few other travellers (mainly about india..) pete and anna are just lovely, they are on a 12 month trip, 5 months in, and had done russia, mongolia, china, nepal and india. they're heading to vietnam next and i am incredibly jealous! it was weird actually, as we would talk to everyone we could find about our experiences in india and at various points in the conversation people would say "so you didn't like it then?" and we'd look a bit confused and realise that most of our experiences and memories of india were usually associated with frustration, hassle, shock and so on... we of course all said "no way man we loved it - totally going back again!"

singapore is cool, very clean, very modern, flashy and there is a lot of flesh on show! the current fashion for the women seems to be to see how short shorts can be and after the modesty of india it has been a bit of a shock. to be honest it has been a bit of a surreal couple of days, kind of a reverse culture shock of sorts. the traffic is so quiet, the streets are spotless, and we haven't been hassled once. today was lovely, walking along orchard road doing some shopping and generally wandering around looking at stuff. i'm pretty chilled out at the moment, i've found some lovely people to hang out with for a few days and it's all good. shame it's quite rainy though :(