Thailand #5

My fifth trip to Thailand was in many ways the best. I had planned to meet up with some of the guys I met there the year before: Levi, Marcus and Gabe who had also planned to meet a bunch of their friends. So before I knew it we were a group of over 12 people from Canada, Australia, NZ and the UK which by itself made for an excellent set of adventures.

Levi admiring his handy work

One night we were all out for dinner all sitting around, a little tired from all the partying. Shortly after we placed our orders Levi decided he needed a pick-me-up and quite suddenly stood up to run across the street to a 7eleven to grab a red bull. He pushed back his chair and jogged across the street straight into the store. Literally. What Levi didn't realise was that it wasn't the entrance he was headed towards but a plate glass window. We heard a big crash and leaped up to see what had happened. After just a few hours, some stitches and bandaging he was already a few buckets in and ready to party again- with a hilarious story that half the island knew about (from having walked past the scene of the accident)

Mandatory "The Beach" photo at Maya Bay

On the bow of Dennis' boat. That's me in the middle with my O-face

One of the highlights of the trip was our boat trip with Captain Dennis. It was such a highlight in fact that we did it twice (I even went into discussions about working for the captain - he saw potential in my recruiting skills). We did a day trip out to Maya Bay (where The Beach was largely filmed) off the coast of Phi Phi island. The boat had this boom we would swing off the side of the boat with some netting hanging off it. Dennis called it the "Ocean Jacuzzi" we jumped off the side of the boat and landed on top of this net that would trail just under the surface of the water. Once you got a hold with your feet you could just relax there as the luke-warm water washed past you. The crew would throw down beers or pass along cocktails. We made a stop at monkey beach- where there were close to 100 monkeys on this beach, we tried to give them bananas and get close to take pcitures but they were very agressive. A few of us had some close calls, I even got cornered by a group of them and had to leap over a rock and a big angry male to get back to the water. A hard day to top.

The Ocean Jacuzzi

Getting a natural pump at the jungle gym, Koh Laanta

Koh Laanta was a very quiet and chilled out place. In fact a little too chilled out. We had some good times driving around the island on the little scooters we'd hired. We went to a driving range for an hour or so and had some very relaxed evenings in after a nice meal watching X-Men: First Class. On one of our rides we went part a fancier part of the island where the nice hotels were. We found this outdoor gym thing that looked amazing. It was a little bit like those cartoons where they blow up balloons to look like weights though- they didn't actually weight much at all.

The biker gang of Koh Laanta

The Return of the Joker

Perisher Staff Party 2011

Since I last wrote in here over a year and half has passed. 2 winters at Perisher, one in Sweden, yet another trip to Thailand (trip #5). In many ways a lot has changed while in most- a lot has stayed the same.

The Perisher season kicked off nicely and before we knew it the staff party was upon us. If I remember correctly the theme was heros and villans? Something along those lines. And what better opportunity to pull out old faithful: The Joker. Inspired by Peter Smistrup back in the day: this is an old favorite that I have pulled out on at least 3 separate occasions. Combined with several jokers pulled from some decks of cards, a nice suit and tie: this was one of my best attempts to date.


Meanwhile, off location (and back in 2010): There is something addictive about scaring the hell out of people. While make the most of the body paint tradition at the Full Moon Party: I had at least 10 different people want to take their picture with me. - No I am *not* an attention whore - ok maybe a little. On this particular occasion I got an extreme amount of joy out of running up to unsuspecting people and asking "WHY SO SERIOUS?!". It was only when some guy curled up into a ball at the bar where they sell "special" shakes that I decided it was time to put the joker to rest and wash my face. He sat there staring at nothing shaking his head and rocking back and fourth. It was very reminiscient of bart and his new crib. "Can't sleep, clown will eat me... can't sleep...."

My riding buddy, Adrienne Cort

Lake Jindy boating with Luke

Snow-wise while the season started out incredibly (something like 110cm in 3 days!) there was very little snow to speak of from there on in. I kept myself busy by going out on boat trips and meeting my share of new faces. I did take advantage of the fresh powder early on to try my first series of tame-dogs (front flips) which while they were preceeded by many failed attempts, including several head landings, and very ugly: had a couple of successful moments. Injury-wise it was a pretty good season. Just a torn AC joint in my shoulder and a bruised meniscus on my right knee. Nothing serious.

Go-Berg

Ever since I got to Sweden I had a feeling that something about Göteborg (Gothenburg) would draw me there. It´s a beautiful city, trams, excellent weather: almost too warm really. I set myself up in a nice hostel in the middle of town and chilled out for a day. Taking some walks around the streets, spending some time getting some more sun in the park and just relaxing while soaking in the atmosphere. This is definitely a city I can see myself spending some time and it has made its way on to my to-do list in the future. Still got that nasty visa issue to take care of but that´ll sort itself out eventually... Day two I met up with Peter and had a random little experience. We ran into one of his old friends who asked us down to a performance at a little organic tea-café in the city; with nothing exactly planned we said sure, we´ll check it out. It was about as alternative as alternative can get. To be honest the opening act was much more entertaining than the main event. The openers were a couple of dudes from Germany who played acoustic guitars and sang engaging songs. The main event were way too pretentious. Trumpet blasts interrupted by poetry readings by girls wearing hemp pants. These guys went all out. We could only sit through about 3 or 4 songs before it was time to shove our ways to the front and get the hell out of there.

The next day we´d planned to stay at Peter´s dad´s place on the other side of the harbour. We found POH (for those of you who haven´t been keeping up- that´s my car) a place for the night and went for a walk around the old harbour.

We did some civilised stuff around town, talking around and talking like normal people before headed back to Pete´s Dad´s for some dinner and drinks. Swedish people are hilarious. We had such a laugh with his parents: made even funnier by Pete´s low alcohol tolerance. Out night out was pretty average. Gothenburg isn´t the best party place in Sweden when you don´t know where to go and as far as I can remember it was a Wednesday. We found a half-decent place but it was a total dude-ranch so we ended up just talking shit with some random Scottish guys. Good times. Peter eagerly broke is high-fat low-carb on the way home with a heavily breaded kebab.

Playing catch-up again

I had all but forgotten about this blog when one of my new and close friends stumbled across it while stalking me. A wave of nostalgia and regret swept over me and I have decided to revisit it the best I can. I fear the enormity of this task may put me off but there is no harm in trying. Stay tuned for the concluding chapters of my European road trip. Next stop? Skåne.

Jeg snakke ikke Norsk

As I made my way towards the boarder I made my way to the last petrol station - Norway is notoriously expensive compared to Sweden and I wanted to make sure POH had a full belly before I ventured into the expensive unknown. Thus far I had been making my way around with the google maps/gps set-up on my phone and it had been working out fantastically- just punch in where you want to go and it takes care of the rest: right down to the best route.

Unfortunately my Swedish pre-paid plan doesn´t include international data so upon crossing the boarder my eyes on the road were cut off. The GPS was still working but the data to fuel the maps was gone. I was a blue arrow trying to follow a blue line in a sea of grey. Things looked grim. I can´t really explain how it happened but by some GPS magic I managed to find my way to Hilda´s place reasonably directly- albeit to my great surprise. Hilda shares a small one room apartment (and bed) with her friend. What a cosy set up we had! They work opposite hours so it wasn´t too bad - not too much overcrowding.

Oslo was pretty low-key, nice and chill, good weather but not much of note. I caught up with Hilda and Juan and was home and asleep by 1. The next day I fired up POH and eventually made my way to the Ski Museum. Pretty impressive place with the ski jump, museum and simulator.
Got myself a book and parked it, dozed off after a while and got some mild sunburn happening. Not exactly what you think and Australian will experience in Norway but hey, I am special.

Headed West

Naturally my time in Stockholm had to come to an end with some crazy partying and that´s exactly what I did. Joel and I hit a two day bender out in the city: we tried our best to get some segways rented for the day but we had no luck - "advanced bookings essential" - that doesn´t really suit my style of travel.. Instead we did a very Swedish thing with the excellent weather in mind and fired up the engångsgrill (disposable bbq) and hit the park in Hörnstull. It was a perfect day really. It didn´t feel like Sweden at all, especially not in May! The weather was up around 22degrees in the sun. Unfortunately drinking in the sun all day didn´t exactly give me loads of energy for pulling an all-nighter. But with a little help from my friends - particularly from Val, I actually made it out until after 3am! Without her smooth moves I wouldn´t have gotten in anywhere at 1am out in Stockholm - to be honest they really shouldn´t have let me in at Berns ;) I am very fortunate to have such good friends in Stockholm really. Joel and Catha always take good care of me, go out and have a great time and are generally there for me. Val is always so in touch with what´s going on in my life, often even more than I myself am! All the while looking out for my best interests. Last but not least (except in height of course) is Nataly: so generous in opening up her home to me and making me feel welcome (despite her heavy social calendar commitments). Time to cross my first border...

Stockholm Scare

The rest of my time in Stockholm is easily skipped over blogg-wise. I went out partying a total of three times in a week, I hit the gym, grilled in the park, got some colour, met up with some friends and did plenty of relaxing, communicating and planning. I have been to that city so many times now I can probably skip over the intricasies.. One moment of note was a little scare with the POH. One day I decided to head out and check out a local gym and get moving a little bit. Hours and hours of driving ahead made me a little concerned about my back etc. I got my stuff together and headed down to the car. I jumped in and buckled up, turned the key and... nothing. Not a peep.

Shit! No problem, no problem. It´s probably just a dead battery. Easily fixed. I could just go upstairs and get some help from Catha- roll start the car down the hill and drive her for a while to get the battery going once again. No Worries.

So we set out about our business - nothing - the end result was far worse. The car was stuck at the bottom of a hill and illegally parked. Awesome. The next two hours were spent trying to make calls and figure out what the Swedish equivalent of the RAC was. This proved much more difficult than expected... But eventually I got Assistancekåren out for much more than I expected but just as predicted- a quick jolt and the battery was fine again- time to invest in jumper cables for the rest of the trip I think?

Setting Out

Knowing that it would be a time-consuming process and that there would be plenty of partying going on in the final days of the season - I set about packing and cleaning early for once. A good five days before departure as opposed to my usual 5 hours. For the first time in as long as I can remember everything went smoothly. This is clearly a result of pure conincidence and I allow no connection to advance preparation.

Nalle Poh has been treating me well since I got him. A few misfires here and there and some strange behaviour at low-speeds, but nothing serious. My first real scare came the other week when I lent the little guy to a friend to drive to Östersund to go shopping. I got a phonecall just 30mins into the drive about the oil alarm going off. Shit shit shit, that´s it. All that money down the drain, the car, insurance, expensive petrol... all of it for nothing... After some time the light stopped blinking and checking that there was oil all seemed well. There was no way I could get the car in for a service as they were massively overbooked so I would just have to hope for the best and drive on. Besides, what´s the worst that can happen with a very old car driving 3,500km through various foreign countries while its oil light is beeping and flashing randomly. Well at least the battery is doing ok.

Emil was driving down at the same time and despite the fact that he left about a half hour after me he called from a few miles down the road as I was passing Gävle. We decided to meet up at a place called Dragon Gate an hour or so north of Stockholm. Emil stopped there for the Chinese buffé but the place it self was amazing. It´s like this giant Chinese temple in the middle of nowhere. A huge restaurant, a ginormous courtyard and a spectaular museum - complete with a complete replica of the terracotta army in China. A very surreal and bizarre place.

As I pulled in to Täby to meet up with Joel and Catha they had already fired up the barbeque for the Swedish day of Valborg (1st of May in Sweden, big outdoor party day here). It was good catching up and meeting some of their friends and just shooting the breeze. Eventually we headed inside to eat and have a few more beers and before we knew it the night had divulged into beerpong and music: always a good recipe for some laughs and a good time. For those of you who know me? (I swear this was Joel´s idea all the way.) After a couple of quiet rounds of beerpong we were getting on our way and starting to get in the mood for a Saturday night out. Suddenly we realised that we were low on beer and hadn´t nearly gotten the beerpong out of our system. And so Deathpong was born. A combination of all kinds of spirits, mixers, beer, wine: (essentially anything we could find in the cupboard) - complete with a penalty shot on the side - it was a dangerous combination that led to a very hazy night. Precisely why I can´t really tell very many details here. Yes, I was back in Stockholm and had finally set out on my roadtrip...

The Forecast Ahead

My first season here in Åre I had accepted the fact that I would need to do my time with kids ski groups even though I had already had a solid dose of them in Norway. A combination of babysitting and tricking kids into having better technique: it wasn´t exactly where my heart lay but I knew it had to be done. Now here I am 2 years later and through a series of misunderstandings and poor communication I have ended up back where I started. Awesome. It´s not so bad: but this isn´t exactly a job you drudge through just to get the fat paycheck at the end if you know my meaning. Neither should the work be drudging nor should one expect the paycheck to be fat.

I looked at my schedule 2 weeks in advance and in seeing snöbollar, snögubbar and still more snögubbar (the 2 youngest beginner groups) I decided to take a week off instead: I needed a break from the little ones and to finally get a chance to do some snowboarding myself.

The week started out less than ideally: rain, wind and poor visability made for a depressing choice of week that many people took it upon themselves to point out - ad nauseam. In the early days of the week I still managed to get in the park and make some progress in my riding. Out riding with Jimmy on Tuesday got me fired up and I made some nice progress all round: towards the end of the day I was nailing various kinds of boxes with confidence and with some egging on from Jimmy; finally had a crack at a C-Box. Lacking in rotation I slid out and landed on my hip and chest. The damage? At first I thought it was just a massive bruise on my thigh but eventually disovered that I had a cracked rib and a broken camera in my shiny new phone. The rib will heal in 3 - 4 weeks and the camera still works: everything is just a bit blurry.

By Wednesday a massive storm had hit and it was absolutely crapping down snow. Strong winds meant that much of the resort was closed but for those of us who knew; this was paradise. We sought out waist-deep powder in the trees and at times were hit with face shots with every turn. While I was in too much pain to hit any jumps or rails: my rib didn´t bother my freeriding so I was happy. The doctor said to just keep on going as usual as long as I avoided any direct impact.

That weekend 30 ski instructors from Åre hit the road for 7 hours to take us down to the Skidlärare SM (National Ski Instructors´ Masters) in Sälen. All the ski instructors in Sweden get to gether for the weekend to have various races and slopestyle competitions, I would like to say that I had to stay out of the comp because of my injury, and while that is true - I am just too crap to go up against the big dogs.

That night we hit it hard for one of the biggest parties of the year: The Skidlärare SM Banquet. The highlight of the evening was the upkeep of Åre´s arrogant image. As the biggest resort in the country: Åre is usually regarded as cocky, arrogant and all-too self aware in the grand scheme of things. In all honesty the reputation is deserved but we spared no expense in living up to that reputation and quite possibly surpassing it. We came up with the cockiest of provocative chants and rhymes: very commonplace at these things but our edge was in our numbers- every time another resort tried to pipe up we overpowered them with brute force. The next day everyone staggered down to the taco bar in a haze to load up for the long drive ahead. Our departure was a little delayed because one of our drivers was no where to be found... Sparing the details all was well a few hours later and we set out on our way.

Now the weather has turned and while it is nice to have over 10 degrees and brilliant sunshine through clear-blue skies while surfing through slush... It is sad to see the snow melt away at an alarming rate. Everyone is getting ridiculous tans and enjoying the sun while it lasts. Rain is predicted and with it the inevitable end of the season looms ahead.

Det Stora Äventuret

It´s been a big weekend. Åre is hosting the Alpine Skiing World Cup which means the town is buzzing. The ski school was roped into helping out on the course which means I had to vest up and get in there with the rest of them. Our job was to follow the racers down the course to clean the track by ploughing away the excess snow. You don´t really realise how steep and icy the race tracks are when you see it on tv but upon closer inspection I found that a few sections were pretty damn scary to be honest. It was quite the experience getting in there amongst it.

After we´d finished up for the afternoon and the last of the racers had done their thing we met up with some others from our place for a ´Restaurang Race´. Basically it´s a Swedish pub crawl on skis. Awesome fun. At one of the bars the manager came out and counted how many people we were and then walked away again. We were a little confused: he then came back with a briefcase and pushed a button on the side. A little nozzel popped out and before we knew it we had a round of whiskey shots put out in front of us. What a champion.

In other snow news: I got some bad news the other day. My level 3 course next month has been cancelled. I was the only one to sign up so they couldn´t justify running it. Damn.

The big news? I bought a car!! It´s a little orange VW Golf and it´s awesome. All the Swedes are jealous and think it´s a wicked car. Whereas there have been a lot of hater comments from the Aussies. What´s all that about? Just look at it. It´s awesome! I need to come up with a name for it- It´s going to be hard to top Baby 7 and I don´t really like the licence POH 123. I may as well call it Whinnie because of that and the colour but that´s just queer. So it´s time to seriously plan my trip around europe. Roadtrip Bitches. Time to bust out the maps and look forward to Det Stora Äventuret!

Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah, Getting Swedish With It.

In case it is lost in writing: the title was an attempt at Will Smith's getting jiggy with it. Lame I know - Am I losing my blogging skills? Nah.

In many ways Sweden is not very different from any other western country. They eat meat and potatoes, they watch tv, they drink alcohol and they gather regularly for social events that involve being childish and a little bit retarded.

But it's not the similarities that catch my eye, but the differences. Some bigger than others, I have been picking up on little things along the way.

Swedes love their meat. They eat beef, chicken, pork and fish just like the rest of us. They eat big giant polish sausage things, massive chunks of pig marinated for an enternity, burgers, minced cow, marianted poultry and even all kinds of weird meat-flavoured cream cheese (A sampling of Betty´s salami cream cheese was scary but surprisingly tasty). A curiously common occurance when it comes to red meat is a side of jam. Lingonsylt is a regular accompaniment to meatballs, deer steaks, blood pudding (a much more refined version of English black pudding) and pretty much any other red meat they serve up. The idea seemed very strange to me and I wasn't too keen on it at first but it's starting to grow on me. A good plate of pannbiff with mashed potatoes, onions and brown sauce is nicely complimented by a big dollop of lingonberry jam. Mums! (yum)

I haven't had too much experience with real home-made meatballs but the cheap frozen type you get from the supermarket have become a staple in my poor season worker diet. Damn tasty. You can even get a plate (with Lingonsylt naturally) from Ikea back home. Highly recommend it.

Swedes love to fika. Basically it's sitting around eating various cake-type baked goods, drinking coffee or tea and talking shit. They do it all the time and get all excited about it. I had a solid 30minute conversation at work the other day about the joys of fika. I suppose the nearest Brittish-culture equivalent would be afternoon tea with scones but this is much more common and can happen any time of day. People go nuts for it and especially the girls get all excited at the idea. I played along at first thinking it was a bit queer, but the structured element of conversation has its merits. Go Sweden.

Hardly a Swedish game but one that occurrs regularly in our house is Beerpong. Dangerously often might be the way to put it. At least from my point of view it´s ridiculously addictive. Basically you set up cups of beer on either end of a table like bowling pins. You throw a ping pong ball from one end and try to get it in to the cups. When you succeed the other team drinks the cup. It´s a bit more complicated than that but you get the idea. Would you like to know more? We play a ´cleaner´version where we use water in the cups and drink correspondingly from a can. With 25 or so 20 somthings in one house - our house gets trashed badly enough as it is: the last thing we need is beer getting splashed all over the tables and floors... Writing it down here makes it seem a bit juvenile but what was that I mentioned about being childish and retarded? I´m just getting Swedish with it in my own way.

2 Months In

2 months into the season and it's been pretty average to be honest. Excellent snowfalls to start with and then a serious drought of the white stuff. Work is a little different with a new boss - she's no doubt good for the business but the atmosphere is a little different from the laid back feel that came along with my old boss: Lelle. He was a great guy in that he got things done but he left you with the feel of a friend you could hang out with and talk to easily. Our new chief is always away on meetings and has a no-BS approach to working here.

We had a new lift open up over on the Björnen side of the resort so the company put on a big meet, greet and ski day for everyone. It was a different experience because despite working in a ski resort - the staff here rarely actually go skiing together without putting in some serious organisational effort. We split up into groups and got shown around the new runs that had opened up and a couple of us actually snuck off to the side and found some make-do powder to play in for a moment. Then we head down to the new t-bar and had a little opening ceremony complete with champagne christening. This was reasonably comical as the champagne had frozen and took a couple of tries to actually smash the bottle.

To wrap up the day everyone skiied down to Tott hotel for some beers, an info session and a bit of light entertainment. They got some comedian up from Skåne (south of Sweden) and he was damn hilarious. It helped a little that people from Skåne have pretty ridiculous accents. I guess that´s kind of why Irish comedians are so popular: everything they say just sounds funny! It was a good chance to see everyone from last time I was here and to catch up. It was a company after-ski experience.

The next few weeks were a series of parties, beer pong, introduction sessions and training, concerts (check out Johnossi - some Swedish indie-rock) and general getting to know the crowd experiences. All in all there was relatively little snowboarding/skiing going on for my part.

Christmas and New Years at our staff accommodation was awesome. Swedes take both occasions much more seriously than us bogans from Perth. Both are a formal occasion with a 3 course meal, dressing up, drinking snapps at the table and singing drinking songs (a little more complicated and varied than he´s a bastard through and through mind you)

Fast forward to the 10th of January and it was time for our roadtrip down to Borlänge. Kim and I signed up for a snowboard instructor´s course (Swedish level 2) while a few girls who drove down with us were doing various other courses at the same time. We drove away from fresh snow and blue skies in Åre about 530kms south to a tiny little resort in Dalarna. We weren´t happy. The car ride was freaking classic. One girl snoring, another with the most hilarious laugh I have ever heard. She would laugh at something HA! (somewhere between and a mixture of a shreik, scream, cackle, giggle, snort and a cough) then we would laugh at that and she would laugh at us laughing and so on. We had several laughing sessions that lasted in excess of 10 minutes. Very theraputic.

We arrived at the big majestic looking hotel to +degrees and slush on the roads. I went to check in and they had no record of me in the computer even though I had parted with AU$1,200 to take part in this course. I was not happy. They were however, very friendly and accommodating and put me in a room while they sorted it out with the company. Not so bad afterall. Got to know a few fellow course participants and roommates briefly but got to bed early for the big first day ahead.
It was a small group of good riders. Everyone had their strengths and our couch liked to do relatively little talking and a lot of snowboarding. 7 days of snowboarding at a high level is something none of us were really used to. Teaching is nothing like this. We were buring around this little resort and slowly discovering that for a small place it was pretty damn good. Good runs, decent lift system, steeps, trees, a decent park... it really had it all. I was very pleasantly surprised in light of my low expectations. After day two we were all feeling it but having way too much fun to let that slow us down.

The 'nightlife' was pretty light-on at the hotel with lots of underage people and not all that much to do. There was a lot of sitting around talking, watching movies and playing boardgames. It was kind of nice but a few of us were getting restless. Our last two nights we head into Borlänge to check out the nightclubs. Friday night was pretty dead and we just got messy in the face of a lack of people but Saturday night was actually pretty fun. We started out like a bunch of lunatics singing and dancing in the car on the way to town. Sofi´s sister was very impressed with the roudy idiots she was chauffeuring around. We arrived in town and got some advice from some randoms and found a pretty decent nightclub as a result. Lots of drinking and dancing and randomness set us up for a good night and a painful morning... But totally worth it!

I made it through the course alive and found it surprisingly easy. I was a little nervous coming into it having not had the chance to practice much but I was told I had only minor areas to improve on and was actually one of the best in the written test. Not bad considering it was in Swedish! We had a long drive ahead of us back to Åre to start work the next morning. It was a good week all in all that far surpassed my expectations. I arranged to work only on snowboard upon my return to give me the chance to use my new certification - it´s nice to take a break from the skis for a little while.

5 Months in One Entry

I have been a bad blogger. Somewhere along the line I let real life get in the way of writing about it. How sick is that? Before I give a recent update I thought it to be important to quickly catch up on the last 5 months as they have been unblogged.

My final days in Perth were rough. I went through a very rough breakup as a result of some very difficult decisions: I now understand why so many people have massive apprehensions about moving in together- I think it´s a privilege that needs to be earned with time. Lesson learned hopefully.

I then went on yet another rampage through Thailand - I hit up Koh Phangnan and Phi Phi again but this time I did a marathon journey up to Laos. I was inspired by my friend Peter the last time I was at full moon and went the joker make-up for the full moon party. I was planning on having it on just for the first couple of hours and then changing to something a little more low key but I was having so much fun messing with people that I couldn´t resist keeping it up. I was having crowds of people coming up to me wanting their picture taken, I was having hordes of travelers shouting "why so serious?" and enjoying myself a little too much messing with people who were clearly messed up on a number of substances. One poor Swedish guy was reduced to tears up at mushroom mountain when I creepily stared at him like some kind of child´s play doll possessed by daemons. I felt a twinge of guilt that made me leave that particular bar.

My trip from Phi Phi to Laos was a hellish nightmare of Thai-travel pain. In the past I have made my way around Thailand by plane. Considerably more expensive but quick and comfortable. I was swayed by a few Canadian guys that I was traveling with and decided to go the cheaper option by bus. It was of course just then that my body decided it had had enough and it was time to go into a feverish stomach-bug coma. To avoid the gritty details I will just say that a Thai bus is not somewhere you want to be violently running for the bathroom.

A brief stay in Bangkok and then another nightmare bus ride up to Laos. Thankfully I had pumped myself with so many drugs that the fever etc had subsided although this only slightly lessed the pain of the 14 hour bus ride to Vien Vieng. Once I arrived I knew I was in the right place. Riverside bars with rope swings and tubes allowed for a 4 day beach party that I wished would never end. But like all good things it did come to an end and one more horrible travel experience awaited me. An exact repeat of the same bus ride back to Bangkok coupled with a much more severe hangover, nothing to look forward to and much more time spent at the boarder made my arrival at Bangkok airport a blurry haze of pain. At least I only had 17 hours before my plane took off. I considered getting a hotel room for the day and sleeping it off but as I had made a significant dent in my finances I decided to sit it out at the airport. I decision I will regret for a long, long time.

It was then on to Stockholm to meet up with my work buddies from Hard Rock and celebrate my birthday with my old roommate from Åre, Joel. Damn it´s cold in Sweden. I had to pack pretty light in terms of clothing because of my excessive amount of winter gear (snowboard clothes, not going out in the city clothes) so my clothing options were limited. Luckily Joel came through and lent me a jacket here and there so I didn´t freeze to death and managed to look half respectable in the process. We´re on our way out in this picture and decided to do the real Stockholm thing and go Stekare (Sweden´s way of saying fancy-boy style). Last time I was in Stockholm I rode a Segway around the world´s biggest indoor Segway track (somehow I think there aren´t many of these because it wasn´t all that big) I told Joel all about it and we got a few drinks into us and went for it. To our horror the place had closed down and there was some clothing store in it´s place. Shattered...

I twisted Joel´s rubber arm a couple of times to fire up a few days in a row and we got up to some crazy shenanigans around town. Good times? Yes. Segway good times? No.

From there it was all abord the train up to Åre again. Now that we´re caught up to date it´s time to look at the season so far...