Koh to the Phanang

Accross the water lay an international island adventure. As always with Koh Phanang, it was filled with stupidly loud dance music, loads of incredible fire twirling, foam parties, beach balloon games, buckets, very questionable milkshakes and general madness. I love it. My second trip there and not likely the last.

Eventually Mathew sorted out his visa situation and met up with me over at the island. We got ajoining rooms at our hotel and arranged to hang out with the three Norwegians I had met the night before. We went over to their place for some pre-drinking and the madness ensued. Anyone who has spent time with me will know that I like a drink or two and am normally the one leading the charge in the drinking department. Not this time. These young psychopaths taunted me with abuse as I turned down drinks in favor of making it past 11pm. We played a variety of drinking games- mostly similar to those with which I am familiar but with some strange adjustments in the rules. We eventually made it out of the house to a pool party down the other end of the beach. Craziness. The girl were completely wasted. I restrained myself from saying 'HA! now who's soft??'

My last trip to Thailand I never got around to having a massage. Strange I know. Mathew was a bit of a Thai-massage veteran so he convinced me to give it a try. Best $7 I ever spent. For someone with as poor flexibility as I, this was a much needed bizarre stretching/massaging experience. As my muscles spasmed in pain and reacted in weird ways my masseuse, Matt and his all had a good laugh. I really need to work on my stretching obviously. Now I am just sorry I didn't go back for more.

As soon as Stroose caught wind of the Foam party going on down the beach he was as fired up as ever. It was pretty awesome actually. One of the bars down the beach had set up a big outdoor section that had foam everywhere. I don't know what it is about foam but people seem to go a bit mental and lose their sense of reality. Awesome huh?

While we were not there for the Full Moon Party this time around. We still met our fair share of interesting individuals from all around the world and got up to our fair share of shenanigans.

As always it was sad to leave. Saying goodbye to travelers you meet along the way is never an easy task. Waiting at the airport in Samui, reflecting on the weeks that preceeded and those to come I looked around to notice one of the most beautiful and picturesque airports I have ever come across. It deserved a picture or two as I lay out in the sun to soak up my last chance at a little colour before the very long winter that lay ahead of me.

Reliving Past Experiences

Someone once told me that if you ever try to relive a fantastic experience you've had in your life, it will always disappoint you. And while that is true of this one, it was still pretty kickass.

I set it up so that I'd meet Stroose in Thailand on my way back to the Northern Hemishpere. He'd been living up in the middle of nowhere going to a Muay Thai training camp and enjoying the ridiculous cheapness of it all. We met up for a night of craziness in Bangkok. Strauss has been there a few times so he knew where to go and we met some friends of his out at a real 'Thai club' rather than falling victim to the various tourist traps around town. Their set ups are crazy. You go in, buy a bottle of vodka or whatever and you're provided with your own table with a built in bar set up. Glasses, ice, lemon, lime, various mixer drinks, salt etc. Basically all the ingredients to get one messy. Well that and a crazy little Thai girl who makes you drink far more than you should before dancing around like a lunatic and getting thrown out (at least 3 times) I met some French dudes there and practiced my awesome drunken French. The thing about drinking is that it makes you THINK your langauge skills are getting better but in reality you just care less about how much they suck.

The next day we headed up to Dok Krai Resevoir for a week of wakeboarding goodness. A severe hangover in the taxi and massive underpreparedness meant that it took a lot longer than it should have and we arrived in a bit of a daze...

Once we got used to our surroundings we realised we were the only guests at the resort; being the very start of the season... In some ways this was a blessing but it was a little quiet around there at night. It was a shaky start but eventually we got some good riding time in and managed to get some improvement happening. Strauss had never gotten up on a wakeboard and I was trying some tricks I never thought I would get to. I even had a go of a wake-skate. It's much like a wakeboard but with no bindings. You stand on it barefoot and can do things like shuv-its and the like.

For the most part we were pretty lucky with the weather. We had mornings with glassy water, a little wind would pick up for us to head in for lunch and then it would glass over in the late afternoon ready for another session. It was really like a little slice of paradise. When we weren't feeling up for riding we set up a bungee cord to pull us over the pool and we had plenty of time to hit the gym equipment, watch dvds or just chill out and have access to a kitchen chef all to ourselves. We couldn't really complain (though looking at the state of my mosquito-bitten ankles sometimes I managed to) My last day on the water I was trying desperately to squeeze in as much time as possible. Strauss had gone on ahead to sort out some visa stuff and some Russians had shown up to start their 2 week waterski trip. The forces were against me. I managed to squeeze in 2 sets and finished up not a second too soon. There were thunder and lightning strikes all around us, and with a metal tower on a boat in the middle of a lake in the middle of swapland? We were the prime target for any bolts wanting to come down to earth.

I had a few days on my own as Strauss fixed up his visa stuff and much like my last trip in Thailand, I met some English guys on their way to Samui and we got on the beers as soon as we got there. It was a messy few days but we had a blast. These boys were in the Army and Thailand was like crack to them. Crowds of skinny Thai girls pawing all over them, practically fighting over them? They just couldn't get enough.

After two wild nights I moved on from them as they seemed determined to stick around but I knew that even better partying lay across the water on Koh Phangan...

I Still Call Australia Home

This blog has been suffering a little of late. This is not going to let me allow it to die however. So here comes the quick catch-up. I was last talking about my last days in the Australian snow. From there I headed back to Perth to see my friends and family and to unwind a little in the comfort of my rent-free home. This latest visit to Perth was much like any other. Beers with the boys, watching the grand final at Rich's new pad turning into a crazy drunken night at the casino getting home close to 6am... Catching up with the family for afternoon tea and dinners... But it had its differences too.

I had a friend from Perisher over visiting and I had the pleasure of showing her around our beautiful, largely un-explored coastline. We drove down to Margaret River and checked out some of the local sights. Something I've not done for many years. The rivermouth is a pretty amazing beach. Very wild at this time of year.

This time my sister and beau-frere were over visiting for some of the time with their new-born baby daughter; little Sonia is cute as hell. I have taken it upon myself to speak to her only in Swedish, singing her snow-game songs as lullabys to send her to sleep when she was upset. She seems to like it and I like the idea of having a secret language to communicate without her mother knowing what we're talking about. I suspect it might take a little more than a few whispers once or twice a year to sink in. But who knows. She has some pretty intelligent parents, a fantastic grandmother, a powerfully unique grandfather and I won't even mention her uncle's talents.


I have been meaning to do so for a long time while in Perth but I finally took it upon myself to learn to kitesurf. I couldn't get hold of an instructor at such short notice so I gathered my uncle's old, crappy and seriously inappropriate gear up and marched down to the beach. After several very dangerous incidents and about 5 or 6 days of practice I more or less had it down- right when I had to leave. At least I have something to draw me back home for once. One of the phases of learning is setting the kite up to drag you down the beach with your heels in the sand. I felt like I was getting a handle on this but one day the wind was a little gusty and I wasn't paying attention and before I knew it I was about 4 metres off the ground and drifting down towards some poor unsuspecting girl who was looking out to sea as she walked down the beach. I was about 30 centimeters from kneeing her in the head and SHE apologised to me? That was a close call.

While looking for an instructor I got chatting to a guy who works down at Safety Bay. He told me how in-demand instructors were these days and after I mentioned my instructor experience he became quite keen for me to do a season teaching there. A little strange considering I can't actually do it myself but hey, I was a snowboard instructor before I was any good and arguably I'm no expert on that to this day...

I found it quite amusing to see David's attempts to convince me to move back to Perth. He insists it's the most awesome place ever and that I will just need to spend a bit more time here to realise that it's where I belong. I think he just wants someone else to play with. One day he convinced me to come around and try out a pair of "ocean-going canoes" he'd borrowed off his father-in-law. He clearly had no idea what he was doing and when we got down to the beach it was choppy as hell. The seas were raging and the only people out on the water were kite surfers. No one was surfing, no one was swimming. All the smart people stayed at home. So we set on our gear despite my best protests and waded out into the raging seas. We tried every approach we could think of, getting in on the sand, getting in half way out, getting in past the breakers... Nothing worked. After at least 40 minutes of getting pummelled and smashed around the best attempt of the day was David managing to stay on the craft for about 30 seconds, and making it through one wave. The whole thing was retarded and I'm just glad we didn't attract a group of passer-bys to laugh at us. Not to mention the danger factor; I very narrowly escaped a broken leg when my canoe came crashing towards me on a wave while I stood in the shallows looking the other way. Luckily I did a very un-graceful backwards high-jump over it at the last second. Thanks David, I guess I need a retarded wake-up call once in a while.

Perth will have changed that little bit extra next time I am there. As we speak my mother is putting the finishing touches on moving to a house in Fremantle. I feel as though I should have some feelings of loss and nostalgia come over me but then I soon realise that I moved out of my childhood home about 15 years ago. Still, we were at Keightley road for about 7 years so it's hard not to have some sort of attachment...