Sorry I haven't been blogging. As most people I know will know my passport has been lost so I've had other things on my mind. I'll try and say what I've done since the last time, but I can't remember the dates so it's just general.

Well, my wonderful mother(I know you're reading this so I'll creep) and her boyfriend Dave came out to visit for three weeks. On their first Friday on the island, I took them into school to teach P4 and P2(2 of the best classes) and they say they enjoyed it. I spent a fair bit of time at Milky Bay resort where they were staying and lost many games of pool to the staff who play all day on the uneven tables with the wonky cues(hows that for excuses?).

We went on a day trip around the island. First we went to the Elephant camp at BanTai and rode an elephant, or me and Dave did, SOMEONE chickened out :p It was different and I'm glad I did it, but I'll stick to TukTuks in future. I also fed the Elephant bananas. I grabs them from your hand with its trunk, and is fairly frightening at first. We then went to the Chinese Temple, I'd already been but this time I got to ask the guide what the writing on a boulder said, and it says "cool heart stone" because its meant to calm you down. We then went to Chaloklaam bay and got in a longtail boat, which i was sure would capsize but didn't. They stopped to snorkel but needless to say I wasn't getting in the sea surrounded by fish. I stayed on the boat and threw bread in the water to attract the fish. This was fun enough at first, but then we started throwing bread at the swimmers to make the fish attack them, which was more fun. Next was Thong Nai Pan which is a nice beach, then Thon Sadet waterfall, which wasn't as impressive as i'd hoped. I haven't been too impressed by Phangan waterfalls to be honest.

I've taught my last day of school, and it still upsets me to think I won't be going back, at least for a couple of years. We stayed for lunch. Kroo Joke(our supervisor teacher) brought us pizza, no rice and water for me! and there was a basket of fruit. I tried Rambutan, which were ok, some random fruit i havent heard of or seen again since, and mangosteen, which is horrible :p Then they got all the kids in the school to come and sit in the canteen and give us a round of applause as goodbye. They got Mon from P2(mine and Emmas favourite in the school, but we didnt have favourites cos we're professional :P) to give us each a pink rose, then a girl from P3 gave emma her present and Jim from P5(my joint 2nd favourite) gave me my present. We each got a thai silk thing, I can't remember what Emmas had on it, but mine had Chang(elephants) all over.

On that night we went for our farewell meal with Subai Erng and Tor. My present from them was a woven elephant keyring(people know I love elephants). I ate cheese and ham on toast, and cheese and chips...they ate thai food. Which included a whole fish with its eyes staring at me, YUK.

I recommend the Queen Victoria inn at Chiang Mai to anyone going there. Staff are friendly, the owner John is a gent(although aussie, but we won't hold that against him) and its real good quality rooms for the price of around 9pound a night.

I didn't really do anything the first few days here, because the passport and money thing was weighing on my mind, but on Saturday me and my friend Tutue went to Chiang Mai zoo, which was awesome, although you have to walk so far there. We saw CHANG CHANG CHANG CHANG CHANG, lions(singh...something), bears(mee), monkeys(ling), frogs(kop), snakes...which I avoided like the plague, koalas, tigers, tapirs, rhinos, orangutans, and I added to my animal feeding skills by feeding hippos(the most disgusting thing you can do. They open their mouths and you throw the food in, and their mouths are full of semi-digested food), and we fed giraffes(which are much more polite eaters). Unfortunately, my camera died after taking one picture there so I don't have lots of zoo pics like I did after france.

After the zoo we went to Robinson airport plaza mall and went to see Batman the Dark Knight, which is brilliant, and I see why everyone made a fuss over Heath Ledgers Joker now, he was great in it.

Anyways, today i fly to Bangkok, and tomorrow I head to the embassy to see if they can help me with the passport situation.

Laters

still composing come back for more!

Headed back to Ko Phangan to meet up with Jen from uni who happened to be in Thailand as well and was attending a Black moon party there. The black moon party is ok, not as good as the Full moon party by a long distance, had to pay to get in, drinks are twice as expensive and there are far fewer places but it was still good fun and good to see a face from home having been away for so long. Also sent home some clothes, my suit and sent my tax return back to Australia.

Sorry, I need a moan, it has nothing to do with the travel, I just need to say it.

Can ANYONE else see how Gareth Barry is significantly better than Xabi Alonso and Javier Mascherano, and worth all the trouble?

Please, someone help me to see it, because right now I see it as a waste of time and money, I've said he's good for years, but he's not an improvement on what's already there.

We went on a Thai cooking class today. We made Chicken Satay with peanut sauce, stir fried chicken with cashew nuts, phad thai and thai geen curry. Obviously I didn't eat mine, but it didn't look too bad :p

its a Germany-Spain Final

The last two days have been...different. Yesterday we were teaching P1, and all of a sudden the kids ran out of the room. The whole school evacuated because these guys were going around spraying pesticides in a white cloud thing. Of course, we were left out of the loop and had no clue it was going to happen, and at the time didnt know what was happening.

Today we turned up to teach but first class was cancelled and we were asked to join the schools national non-smoking day parade. So we walked around Chaloklam holding our signs(in Thai, it coulda said anything, "I'm a stupid englishman who can't even read his own sign", although I think it was a proper sign :p). 3 girls with a big banner leading the way, then me and emma, random english joining in behind them, followed by all the students, the staff, and drums playing. Really strange but fun. The kids were in either height or age order at first, but by the end the tall older kids and the short younger ones were all at the front. We were letting them hold half of our signs, but they got bored of carrying them quickly(we carried them the whole way and didnt complain!). Strange couple of days. We went for a meal in Haad Rin a couple of nights ago, and I bought some pirate dvds from a shop there. Juno(good quality, dvd rip), The Incredible Hulk, Superhero Movie, Kung Fu Panda(All filmed in a cinema, but watchable quality. And Indiana Jones(awful quality, I swear I'm not meant to see this movie).

Anyways, until next time...

Exhausted today I am. I don't teach on Tuesdays, but Emma was teaching at our beloved Chaloklaam school at 8.30, so I got up at 7 to get the taxi at 8 when she did to Chaloklaam. It saved me having to pay for a taxi by using the school one! Anyways, I got dropped off at the First Bow and Arrow Club opposite Phangan Safari. I am now a member of an archery club, go me. I managed to lose two arrows in the wood behind the club, but thats besides the point. I'm hitting the board(although it may not be the target) on about 80%+ of my attempts now, its a start since I've only done it an hour so far. It's actually quite fun, although going to retrieve the arrows each time in the rain isn't so much fun. I got the Taxi back when Emma got picked up (so it didnt cost me anything for transport - its on the way, I didnt ask him to make a detour or anything, just an extra 2 stops). I then went back to my bungalow and read some of my book(I'm on my 4th book in a week, go me :p), and then I realised what I thought must be around 5pm was only 2pm. So I wandered in the rain for an hour to kill time. I stayed up and went to Sky Sports Bar at 10pm for the 11pm kickoff of Spain v Russia. 4-1, villa villa villa pavlyuchenko fabregas if anyone was interested - mega Torres assist on the first one though). And got in about 1am. Then today we went to teach, and we had the worst class in history. The first class where we've had to sit people away from each other, and we have the monsters tomorrow too. We don't know what to do with them. The redeeming feature was after an hour of hell with them, we had the best class in the school, P2. We love P2, they make us like the job. P1 are awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful. I think I made my point about P1 :p The rest of the classes are fine, and if we can get this lot under control they probably will be too...it's just how...without the use of tasers or sedatives...I might let them watch Lord of the Rings, that might put them to sleep at least. If anyone comes here, visit Franck's in thongsala. He's from Paris and its a french restaurant/bar/lounge/boulangerie/pattiserie. They make amazing baguettes, and Franck doesn't get offended at my poor attempts at french :p I guess that's probably it for the time being, so for now, au revoir 

I want to say now, before either side play, it will be a Germany-Spain final, with Germany winning it. Let's see if I'm right.

We did an Island tour on monday, nothing overly special, a trip to the chinese temple, a beach and paradise waterfall, which incidentally was a bit dry so was more like paradise puddles as no water was falling between them.

The school is great. So far I've taught 5 classes with emma and 2 alone. There's some trouble makers and some bright students, some loud and some shy. I tell you though, I will never disrespect another teacher for as long as i live. It's exhausting and keeping their attention is hard.

There's a really shy boy in one of my classes, and the others don't talk to him that much, he just sits and draws most of the time. I'm determined to get him out of his shell, and to try and get the others to accept him. I haven't made anyone sit apart from each other yet but I feel its only a matter of time.

Everywhere you look, theres places serving western food, so I'm fine on that front. I'm getting used to the heat, and the sun. I still havent fully gotten used to geckos running around my walls and ceilings making weird noises while I try to sleep though.

Bye for now

just wandered around town today. Only interesting thing is I had 2 gecko-like lizards runnin across my walls and ceiling, makes it slightly difficult to sleep, and they make a horrible jurrassic park raptor-esque noise. Weird

Well, we left the hotel at 5pm yesterday, our train left at 7.30pm. It arrived in Surat Thani at 7am, then we had a 2 hour bus ride, and a 3 hour boat ride to get to the island, but it's lovely, a real tropical paradise. Slept for a bit then we were told who we were teaching with. I'm teaching with Emma, probably at Chalok Lam school on the north of the island. We went for dinner and everyone sang happy birthday and theyd made me a card n balloon and bought me a cocktail. It was nice

ko phangan really is fantastic! even nightlife reaches the critical mass, albeit starting late, with beach parties and even a place (obviously called 'zoom') playing psytrance / goa there... no beach location with psytrance can be bad, even though only a few lost psychos hang around there! :)

minus points for no waves whatsoever and overpriced internet... they advertise wifi on the island but it's bad coverage and very expensive - too bad, i would have stayed a month here otherwise and worked on some things

many many scandinavians and swiss folks around, the sunbathing blondie type, but not so many loud obnoxious guy groups as on samui. it's quite relaxing during the day. great mix between peace, sun & thoughts during the day and party at night.

the normal day-circle is shifted by a few hours as it should be at a beach... while i'm writing this at my beach lookout spot at 11 am, the first few people are gathering on the beach. i had the whole bay for myself when i had a quick hangover swim this morning.

i found a fantastic restaurant yesterday, called bamboozle or something like that. it's mexican and i can't really judge the quality of the food (i liked it, but i'm not really a gourmet hehe) but the atmosphere was top notch and food not too expensive. it's set in a teak bungalow up the hill between trees.

damn, this is my 8. month of traveling and after immersing myself the first few months i've moved more and more in an observer role. i travel more like a critic than actually being part of the whole thing :)

at 9pm a tropical rain storm said hello and i used that as a sign to have a quick power nap before the night out... got up at 12, dodged the army of stray dogs claiming the beach near my bungalow and went to the cactus beach / indoor club. thanks to billions of bucket-selling hawkers at the beach drink prices are quite nice (60 for a glass, buckets start at 180 or so) and thanks to the unsealed mini bottles of booze in those buckets (which means with a probability of 99% that this smirnoff bottle is actually a refilled bottle out of the trash bin filled with some cheap headache-infusing knockoff) everyone is drunk quickly.

dancing started at 1am with a bargirl / touristgirl ratio of 20/80, which at 5am when i left was transformed into 80/20. i was wearing my white money shirt without expecting uv lamps so i was looking more like a walking xmas tree.

what else? two fights... gotta love the thais. ever-smiling, suppressing all anger until with the help of booze it bursts out full of rage. thais dont fight for fun or to settle arguments, it gets pretty serious. not a problem if thai vs. thai, as quickly the two sides are separated... but thai vs. farang can get quite ugly.

and what about the thai girls? i was once again on the prospect list of a bargirl and after getting rid of her a few times she came back with her brother barboy saying 'you gay!'. what's worse than bargirls? right, barboys.

but nevertheless, i like it so much here in phangan that i will probably ditch going to ko phi phi which is probably a more ko samui like experience. but i haven't decided yet. 

Today I did not do much actually. I first went into town to buy some slippers and sunscreen (my bottle of sunscreen was conviscated by security at the airport yesterday because I had it in my hand luggage which was apparantly not even allowed on domestic flights). Also, I arranged to go on a snorkling trip aound Ko Tao tomorrow.

The rest of the day I spent my time on the beach. Although I used sunscreen I got burned pretty bad.