Nothing To Do With Toast

Hello again,

Just a quick one. It was my twenty-sixth birthday yesterday (yay me!), thanks to everyone who sent emails and texts, it was deadly getting so many!!
As fate would have it, we had to do our visa run yesterday. We were collected at our hotel at 4.30am and we then travelled straight for 16 hours on ferry's and minibuses across Thailand to the border with Burma and straight back again. We spent a grand total of 11 minutes in Burma, but I do now have a stamp from there with my birth date on it so that's cool.

One thing did surprise myself and charlie was the other people doing the visa run. We expected to be with other back packers and maybe having a bit of a laugh with them, but it turned out we were sharing a minibus with the more seedy side of Thailand's visitors, old men who just didn't look right, while we were on the 6am ferry. We spotted a couple of them drinking a few beers and generally looking like they have just crawled out from under a rock. As the day dragged on it became clear the guys were seriously dodgy and looked like the kinda men that may have been over here for reasons other than sunshine and sights. It was a real eye opener and myself and charlie spent most of the time (outside of the minibus) staying the hell away from them. I don't know if they were the kinda guys who may have a problem staying away from kids, but they gave me the creeps and made us come to the conclusion, if your going to encounter a problem over here, its more likely to be from another traveller rather than a Thai person. The Thais are really nice and friendly and its quite surprising when you see some of the shit they have to put up with from certain travellers. They really appreciate when you speak a little Thai to them and just generally be polite, a lot of asshole travellers (backpackers and fortnighters alike) really do treat them like idiots and behave like they are their servants, Its a nasty side to things over here, but it just makes you aware of how you behave and treat other people.


Here is a photo I took a while back of an Elephant:



He kept on staring at me and the look in his eye was very weird, it looked so human. You could see the intelligence in his eye. Either that or he wanted the banana I was holding......


Well, You try getting a decent photo of charlie on a ferry at 6am.......


This is just before day-break over looking Nathon on Ko Samui, It was pretty cool watching the sun come up, as it did we spotted Ninjas training on the pier, Well I'm pretty sure they were ninjas, although charlie seems to think they were old ladies doing "Tai Chi". Either way it looked deadly.


This is sunrise over Ko Samui, I normally take a rest from my daily morning run (just like in the Bourne supremacy) to watch the sunrise....... Its so peaceful at that time of day.......... *cough* don't mention this to charlie, I sneak out of bed every morning and she never See's me *cough*


This is the border of Burma, Its pretty complicated, but its not a place your meant to visit as any money you would spend there would be helping the evil military dictator (Than Shwe) and generally not helping the people of Burma, who actually need it, Oh and by the way never call it Myanmar as that's the name he has called it, Its still Burma. He may not be as bad as his predecessor, but he's still a pretty big gobshíte towards the ethnic minorities of Burma.

Right, enough boring stuff.......

What else do you do on your birthday when your too wrecked to go drinking? You go to the local store and buy your own height in Explosive fireworks of course........


Just look at that........ Each one of those little red things is a banger, and the thing on top, you guessed it, is an even bigger banger....... Sweet.


Charlie was NOT pleased.........

In a country that laws are "optional" fireworks are not really a problem, what is a problem is that in most major cities there are markets called Russian markets, These are kinda like the "black market" except worse. It is possible to walk into these places and buy machine guns, mines, grenades and even rocket launchers, I kid you not. a brand new MP5 Machine gun is roughly about 900 Euros, So on that note if anyone wants any Christmas presents, just let me know........


Sean and Charlie.