PACE

Computer Charlie, the world is waiting just for you
but you stay where you are for fear and comfort

Ko Phan Nand is pretty incredible. Right now I’m on a secluded beach where there are about 9 people max on the beach at any one time. Last nite a met a 47 yr. old guy (Keye) & his wife who were from Denmark, he was in 2 bands back there and we ended up playing guitar till about 4 am. He rocked.

Rented some dirtbikes (125cc) and rode up through some crazy dirt/mud/rock roads through the center of the island and found some really cool beaches & coves in the middle of nowhere.

Tonite is the ‘Black Moon’ party on our beach. Thats all i have time for ,… off 2 eat.

On to Ko Phan Nang.

45 minute ferry ride from Ko Samui, Ko Phan Nang is ground zero for the famous Full Moon party. I went to the last one and it was pretty crazy even though it was cancelled because 2 people drown the day before. I forgot to write about the Full Moon party, but basically, Had Rin Beach on Ko Phan Nang is the place and it is just flooded with thousands of people 8-10 thousand is what I heard, and it is basically a huge rave on the beach. Since it was cancelled, the beach was closed but the town was still mobbed, so it was still a good time.

There is once bar/club called Ibiza something or other and I managed to stumble into there and catch some really sweet show that was going on. There was a beat boxer from England on stage, just him and a mic, kicking drum & bass beats. Everyone was getting into to dancing and what not, it was crazy. Then the guy is like ‘hey, we got an MC from England ‘ere, come on up man, if you’re still ‘ere”. So this MC guy gets up and just starts spitting some crazy shit overtop of the drum & bass beatbox. Ah, it was awsome. So, everyone’s getting into that and this guy comes up with a digeree-doo and starts on that. By the end of the night there were those 3 guys, plus a guy comes up with an acoustic guitar and somehow seamlessly slides into the mix. So, you have all those guys up there just going crazy and then some R&B guy comes up and starts singing overtop of it all. Crazy.

Anyway, there is a 1/2 moon party tomorow night on the beach right out where I’m staying, so we’ll see how that is. Im out of Had Rin, between Had Rin and Thong Sala, real quiet beach and a nice room about 50 meters from the ocean.

Met back up with Becky, the Canadian girl I travelled with, her family is here and they took me out for dinner last night , which was really nice. I had a seafood grill with mussels, fish, crab, shrimp, squid..all sorts of things.

But back to the Full Moon party, I ended up hanging out most of the night in this place called the Reggae House. They had a Thai band doing covers all night long and they were really good. They were rocking out & got into some Motorhead and Metallica, and onto some Guns N Roses , which was great to see a Thai band play. November Rain…classic.

So Ko Phan Nang is alot more chilled out than Ko Samui, especially if you get off Had Rin. I’ll be here till after New Years, then onto Cambodia! Mabye I will see some friends there??

liefs / pace

Wagwon? Respeckt. Booyakasha.

The past number of nights (not quite sure how many) have been spent at Lucky Mother Bungalows. Luckily I stumbled upon the place and met some really cool people. All from other countries. 2 Welchman, who of course loved John Charles, the famous Welch soccer player from the 50’s. The English preferred Puscas (Hungary) from that era, though. So soccer education has been part of the stay since all Europeans so far have near encyclopedic skills as far as soccer is concerned.

I mean, how could you possibly forget the 58 Wolrd Cup though? Pele, 17 years old, toes the ball into the corner goal? Priceless.

And Maradonna? “The Hand of God”. 1986 World Cup in Mexico against England, he goes up for a header and just punches the ball in, but the refs don’t see. One of the most amazing goals ever. And, of course later in the same game he dribbles around 6 English players and the goalkeeper scoring an amazing goal.

The Italians (Lorenzo and Gariella) loved Maradona. Actually pretty much everybody loves Maradona.

Its halarious, its just like home though during football season. Just imagine a conversation about the best Football teams/players, but you have no clue about any of the teams or any players people are talking, but they are SO damn excited. Its great. Just losing it over Maradona, then someone will chime in with ‘what about Ronaldinho?!’, then its a collective ‘OHHHHHH!!!’ and the conversation takes another turn.

The roster of the crew was such:

Nick and Chris – Welch
Casey – American
Lorenze & Gabriella – Italian
Geom – French
Myra & Marjos – Dutch
Ross – English
Melanie – American ( lived in Bangkok)

Everyone knows DJs. Drum & Bass, Jungle, maybe some house. People seemed to know DJs in and out. Apparently Prodigy is fucking huge and just blew the fucking doors off the scene when they came out with Prodigy – Experience. I had to draw on some oldschool cd knowledge and pull out some lines from the 1 Prodigy album I do have – Fat of the Land.

of course , everyone knows – Breath for pressure, come play my game I’ll test ya, psycho somatic addict inasne, COOOOMMME PLAAAAY MYYYYYY GAAAAAME. Oldschool. (Smack my Bitch UP, Breathe, Firestarter). So we worked some ‘history of the club scene in britain’ education in there.

Special thanks to Ross for the Double Back Flip / Double Back Roll. Respect.

The weather has been a bit shitty, but its still the beach. Fucking Right.

Been working on my accents a bit, almost got the Cockey English. Liverpool is a bit to advanced for me at this point. (Sounds a bit like Brad Pitt in Snatch) A few more days with Ross and I’ll be fooling people in the Pub though.

“He’s thrown a kettle over a pub, what have you done?” – Gareth.

If you havent seen the original version (British) of The Office, please watch it. Its Brilliant, really.

and if you have – Spaceman comes down to answer some things, the world gathers round from paupers to kings…

Avalon is always beside me
And I’m following it home
Where is my home
Orion glows
And his eyes open up
I once believed I would set you in line

If only I had the strength you’d be completely accepting something else

If you keep asking me I’ll melt away in the summer air
It won’t hurt half as much and I’ll beg for you please stop it now
If you keep asking me I’ll melt away in the summer air
It won’t hurt half as much and I’ll beg for you just tell me something

The fluid through the alpha waves and power cables everywhere
Exercising self-control
The child calls
And she lies open
I would believe if only I’d been thinking at all

If only I had the strength you’d be completely accepting something else

If you keep asking me I’ll melt away in the summer air
It won’t hurt half as much and I’ll beg for you please stop it now
If you keep asking me I’ll melt away in the summer air
It won’t hurt half as much and I’ll beg for you just tell me something

You swore
Out like might
You cried
So I’m engaged to smile

If you get up real early you can catch the monks making their rounds. They must start around 5:30 or 6 am. We caught them on their way back to the temple at around 7 am. The local people make food for them and then give it to the monks as they pass by. People are out on mats waiting for them, and when they see you come by you can buy something from them to give to the monks. I bought some kind of rice thing wrapped in leaves and gave it to a young monk.

Luang Prabang has some cool street & night markets and some good restuarants on the riverside. A meal was about $2 and a room was about $2 a nite also. The guesthouse we stayed in was mostly teakwood. Teakwood floors, desks, furniture.

After Luang Prabang was a harrowing ride through some huge ass mountain range. We’re in bus full of people careening around 270 degree turns with a sheer cliffside and of course no guardrails or anything. After I made my peace with the Lord and accepted my inevitable death, the ride was alot easier. The 400 foot drop-off remained scary however. At one point a guy in the front gets up and just starts handing out plastic bags. I’m thinking, ‘oh sweet, trash bags, good idea.’ Well, they were not trash bags. The next 30-40 minutes was a roller coaster ride through this mountain, the bags being puke bags. About 12 people started puking into the clear plastic bags, then heaving the bags out the windows. That was entertaining. Oh, and the best part was the near zero visibility due to the fog, or as our altitude would have it, the clouds.

We stopped for a piss/puke break and i see this guy coming on the bus with a sweet army green bag slung over his chest. Im thinking ‘sweet bag’. Then he climbs over the seat (there were huge rice bags in the isle) and i see something sticking out of his jacket. Oh.. That was a sweet -ammunition- bag. The thing poking out is a machine gun.

Apparently according to the guide book, we are on Rt. 13, which happens to get hit by armed bandits every so often. Great. So there are people who are revolutionaries or somehow involved in the Lao Revolution who are still up in the hills and shit. Ah, that is great. I guess the guy with the machine gun was our protection, but I wasnt sure, so I just tried to avoid him. Machine gun guy also helped change our tire when we got a flat.

The next stop was Vang Vieng, which was a really cool town. Its right on a river with mountians in the background. The Americans built an airstrip there back in the 70s and that is basically what the town is based on. Now there are a bunch of cool bars. At alot of them you sit on pillows around tables and drink beers while listening to some pretty cool music. They played nothign but Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, and some other crazy mixes that inevitably had Bob Marley in them but poeople singing blues or rapping. ( heard an awsome Marley/Lost Boys mix as well as Wylclef/Snoop/Marley).

Vang Vieng has some caving and some river tubing. I decidied just to chill out and drink a few beers by the riverside bungalows. At nite down by the riverside there were firepits, hammocks, riverside bars, etc. I bought a toy plastic axe and gave it to John (new zealand) for his b-day. He carried it around to the bars at nite.

ONTO VIENTIANE – THE CAPITAL OF LAOS!

Thats me in front of this bridge/memorial thing. After we bombed the living shit out of Laos, turning it into the most pock-marcked peice of land on the planet, we (the United States) gave Laos a bunch of cash for redevelopment. Apparently they just built this bridge thing.

Vientiane was ok. Too busy for me. Caught some Muay Thai at night, about 8 fights.

Right now I’m sitting in a bar in Bangkok on Khao San Rd. which is a huge backpacker hangout. I have a flight down to the islands down south tonite.

Time to move on to the ISLANDS. p-p-pace

Holy Shyte!

$1 U.S. for a full size bottle of Whiskey Lao. Last nite was a doozy.

From Chiang Rai we rode motorcycles about 70km up to the Golden Triangle. GT is where Thailand, Burma (Myanmar), and Laos all meet. We were gonna take the highway, but at breakfast the lady there told us another way to go and we ended up riding regular roads through some really cool areas. People just looked at us and waved, we saw some really cool stuff. Pockets of houses and stands then farms then mountains. So we come around a corner and we are making a right onto a road called 1018 (i think), and all of a sudden in the sky there is this monstrous Buddha statue. It was f’ing huge, right out in the middle of nowhere. It was set on top of a staircase that must have been 2 to 3 hundred feet up, then the Buddha on top must have been about 50 feet tall. I have no idea what the place was called, but it was full of monks all dressed up in orange. We rode in and were the only people besides monks there. They just looked at us pretty much and didnt say anything. We took a few pictures and left. I keep saying ‘we’. I’m travelling with a girl I met on the plane from Tokyo to Bangkok. She left Bangkok about 5 days sooner than me , but we met up again in the North and have been traveling together. Definitly just friends, which is cool. Its good having a travelling companion especially since I have zero sense of direction. Oh and its real cheap up here. About $1 a beer and $1-4 for a room.

After Chiang Rai I headed across the Laos border. $30 Us to get into Laos for 15 days. I totally forgot that Laos is a communist counry until I saw the Hammer and Sickle flags flyin. Crazy shit.

So from the Laos border town we got on a slowboat and headed down the Mekong river. 6 hr ride the one day, then a stopover in a small village, then another 6 hours the next day. The slow boat isn’t all that bad. You do get tired of sitting on the wooden seats, but luckily we had a pad for day 2. Got some reading done ( George Orwell, 1984) and the ipod was definitly clutch. Rocking some Led Zep floating down the Mekong. Felt like I was in Full Metal Jacket or something. The Mekong is pretty sweet, but I definitly would not want to be driving a Swift Boat down that river into hostile territory. Fuck that. Anyway the slow boat is better than the fast boat , which rockets down the whole way in about 6 hours , but you are clutching your helmet to your head and hoping you dont die as you whiz by debris in the river..

So, now I am in Luang Prabang, Laos. Travelling with Becky from Canada, John from New Zealand, and Christie from New Zealand. Going to take it easy here for a couple of days , then head to the capital of Laos, Vientiane. After that, its finally onto the beaches of Southern Thailand. Tical.

Pace.

Ooh and btw, I am officially a MILLIONAIRE. but only because Lao money is ridiculous and you get heaps of notes when you exchange cash.