the blue horizon

I went to Koh Chang on the advice of my brother. Good advice. Though talking to the owner of where I am staying, he wouldn't recognise the place if he came back now. It's the low season so there are not too many people around. I'm staying in a little wooden hut on top of a cliff just on the outside of Bang Bao which is quieter still. At night it is quieter still, just myself, the owner and his family, 2 labs, 3 cats and the infinite sound of the ocean. Which is why I'm pretty stoked that I managed to swap the *shitest novel Stephen King ever wrote for Dostoevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov'. It should keep me occupied for a while.  A very rare thing to find a decent novel in a hostel bookswap - usually it's Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, Andy McNab or Stephen King or German. I quite like Bang Bao, even though it's a tourist village it's worlds apart from Phuket. I've walked down the main drag a few times ( a pier in this case) and no one has offer...

I entered Bangkok how I think everyone should, on the back of the scooter through morning rush hour traffic. Firstly it wakes you up from your overnight bus trip, and secondly I think it prepares your brain for the hectic city it is about to attempt to comprehend.  Bangkok is a busy place, too busy?, Always seems to be so much going on, what I love about that is that it would still be this way without tourism, very unlike Patong. I can see it being a while before I get sick of this place. If you were to pass out somewhere on Bangla Road and came to on Khao San Road only to think to your self "Where the fuck is the beach?" you could be forgiven. If there is a difference it's a small positive; a few less touts for ping pong shows and few more foods stalls. You could think of a Khao San road as something of a progressive three course meal with entertainment, of course definitions of entertainment vary ( I guess the same could be said of 'meal'). First course is gri...

Most nights of the first week are blurred into to one anyway so I'll just pretend it was. After a Pad Thai Gai or similar at one of the eateries whose name I'll never remember (laughable that we bumped into some kids who said Lonely Planet said some place was better than the next, walking past dozens of identical places only to realise they probably interchange their names on daily basis just for shits and giggles) we invariable ended up somewhere on Soi Bangla. Some culture was embraced as Longy would put it - I'm still not sure whose culture exactly - and then somehow we would all end up back at our hotel in the wee hours to share a few stories and consider just whose job it was to feed the birds during the day. The days were spent sleeping intertwined with stints in the pool bar, shopping for counterfeit DVD/shirt/watches/suits/experiences or searching out another Pad Thai. We did take a boat trip out to a few of the islands around Koh Phi Phi. 'The Beach' Isla...