I might be the worst blogger ever….. almost a month since I last wrote anything.
We stayed on Koh Tao until the 19th December, about 3 weeks all in all. We convinced Emma and Rosie to hang around for another week after Emma’s birthday and then had to say goodbye. We’ve decided to go and meet up with them in Australia after we’ve done Laos/Vietnam/Cambodia.
After Koh Tao we went to Koh Phangan. We had a couple of days chilling out, riding scooters and seeing a little bit of the island, then it was time for the Full Moon Party. That was certainly an experience…. we had a brilliant night, but to be honest the whole thing was a little bit pikey. Like a carnival without the rides. We had a few drinks then, at about 3am, headed up into a hidden away bar called The Islander where we could escape the madness. The DJ there played an actual set, of actual good music, quite a novelty out here. We watched the stars, then the sunset, then went home. On the way home we shared a taxi with an unconvincing ladyboy and an Irish guy covered in cuts and bruises. He’d “tactically” jumped off the back of a scooter, because the person driving it was “trying to take him down”
We had Christmas on Phangan, and although it was hard to get into the spirit of things when it was 30 degrees outside, we managed it in the end. We bought some santa hats and went to the Mason’s Arms, a proper English pub which did proper Turkey dinners- all the trimmings. It was a very surreal experience!
After Phangan we got a ferry to Suratthani and the night train up to Bangkok. The night train was brilliant: you got your own little bed, just about big enough to fit in with a curtain on the side to cocoon yourself inside. It was like a den, I loved it! Had a great night’s sleep too, definitely better than the bus. We wanted to get the train to Chiang Mai too, but it was fully booked for New Years so we had to get a hellish night bus instead.
Chiang Mai is a lovely city, almost feels like a European town in places. You don’t get hassled in the streets, it’s nice and cheap, temples everywhere, and just really chilled out. One day me and Daz rented a motorbike and rode to the top of Doi Inthanon, Thailand’s highest mountain, at 2565m high. The views were pretty spectacular.
We had our New Years in Chiang Mai, and it was quite an experience. As soon as it went dark the skies filled up with thousands upon thousands of paper lanterns. Fireworks were being set off in the streets, and you had to be on your toes because they were literally going off in the road while you walked down it. We saw in the New Year in a rooftop bar overlooking the crowds of people below with a huge firework display going on over our heads.
Now we’re in Pai, which is another one to go on my list of favourite places. It’s up north of Chiang Mai (only about 40 miles from the Burmese border as the crow flies) in the mountains. It actually gets cold on a night here, a sensation I’d forgotten about entirely. It’s really nice to get into a bed with a duvet (two actually) on a night! So far we’ve been exploring the mountains on scooters, and yesterday we visited Thailand’s longest cave, although we only went a few hundred metres of its 12km length. Pai itself is lovely, so chilled out and with live music going on every night.
On the 8th we have to leave Pai and head for the border, as our visa runs out on the 9th. From there we’ll enter Laos and take the two-day slow boat down the Mekong to Luang Prabang. I can’t believe we’ve been in Thailand for nearly two months!
I’m aware I’ve not written anything on here for a while, so here’s a little update for you…
Last you heard I was on Koh Tao: I’m still there now, but we’ve fitted in a trip to Koh Phangan in the mean time for the half moon party… We hadn’t planned on doing this, but over the last couple of weeks we’ve had a bit of an adoptive family going on: 7-strong at first, now down to 5, and soon to be tragically reduced back down to the original 3…
We met Emily and Sarah on Phi Phi and convinced them to come to Tao, and then on Tao we met Emma and Rosie. After a few buckets one night, a family decision was made to go check out the party. The party itself was quite fun, even if it did cost 500 baht to get in and had crap music, but we had a really nice family home which we stayed in for a few days.
Emma and Rosie were due to be going to Phi Phi, but it was our turn to do some blagging and they were soon convinced to come back to Tao instead. We stayed for a few nights in some hillside/jungle bungalows owned by the friendliest people ever who also cooked the BEST curries, and then had to bid farewell to Emily and Sarah.
We were gutted to say goodbye, as me Daz and Greg had been with them for about a week and a half by this point, but our sadness was relieved a bit by the fact that it was Emma’s birthday and we’d treated ourselves to a pretty pimped out hillside mansion for a couple of days! With a pool overlooking the bay, 2 beeeeautiful bedrooms with en suites, and a nice living area for us to have some drinks in, it was more or less paradise! If it hadn’t been costing us about £25 a night each then I think we’d still be there. The lovely staff even turned up at our door with a free birthday cocktail for Emma and gave us some paper lanterns to set off… admitedly the lanterns may have had something to do with the fact that it was also the King’s birthday, but it was a nice touch anyway!
We’ve had proper monsoon weather for the last couple of days but it seems to be clearing up… It’s still raining on the other side of Thailand where the girls are meant to be going, so we’re hopefully going to hang onto them for a few more days, but eventually it will just be the three amigos again. I guess this is the problem with travelling, too many goodbyes… Wouldn’t change it for the world though.
Ko Tao.
Yesterday would have been Ed’s 24th birthday. Can’t think of a much more appropriate place to have a drink in his honour… other than in Tadcaster with my extended family.
Been thinking of you all and wishing you were here. And Ed… always.
So, as most of you will know, I’m in Thailand!
It’s taken the best part of 48 hours worth of travelling to arrive in Phuket, where we are at the moment… the highlight of the trip has to be falling asleep on our connecting plane in Delhi, only to wake up 3 hours later still on the runway!
I’m struggling to keep up with what day it is to be honest, which is a rather lovely feeling! As much for my own benefit as anyone elses then, here is a breakdown of the trip so far…
- Wednesday 10th November: left Tadcaster about 2pm, Gav drove us to Heathrow (much appreciated!), flew to Delhi…
- Thursday 11th: (eventually) caught a connecting flight to Bangkok. We arrived in Bangkok about midnight, local time. A Thai guy called Joe who worked at the hotel took us out for some drinks, and then to this little restaurant hidden behind some shops. You wouldn’t have known about it if you weren’t with a local, and it served probably the nicest food we’ve eaten so far- an absolutely beautiful Pad Thai. With a large beer, the meal came to 100 baht- just over 2 quid!
- Friday 12th: woke up after a heavy sleep and wandered around Bangkok. We went to a temple and got hustled into a tuk tuk to go on a bit of a tour. We saw the Lucky Buddha and the Black Buddha…and then got a tour of various shops where the driver could earn commission! Daz got an amazing green silk suit, and we all somehow ended up booking a bus trip and about 3 weeks of accomodation- the first 2 weeks in Phuket and Phi Phi, and then a week on Phagnan for the full moon party in December and over Christmas. We could definitely have got this cheaper had we not booked anything, so we won’t be doing that again, but in our sleep-deprived minds it made sense at the time!
Went out for drinks again in Bangkok, and met a guy called Simon who’d been travelling for about 6 years… don’t worry though, he wasn’t exactly an advertisement for that kind of lifestyle! He had an Italian mate who looked exactly like Robert Downey Junior. Met a couple of English girls who took us to a club for a dance, and then we took them back to the restaurant we’d been to the night before… I ate crocodile which tasted, inevitably, like chicken. - Saturday 13th: went to see the Standing Buddha, which was pretty impressive- absolutely huge and made of solid gold (I’ll get some pictures up at some point, but this connection is painfully slow)… sat in the bar we’d been in the night before for a bit- Simon hadn’t been home yet and Robert Downey Junior was still on the pool table- and then went to catch our bus to Phuket. We were pretty keen to get out of Bangkok to be honest- it’s quite fun at first, playing spot the ladyboy and watching the bizarre characters from around the world who’ve come to Thailand for whatever reason, but it’s just hectic! Everyone wants to sell you something, mainly wooden toads, silly hats, or admission to various kinds of show, and the tuk tuk drivers here are the worst! They don’t really want to drive you anywhere unless they can get commission out of it- and when we went to the tailors for Daz’s fitting the driver kept turning around every time the traffic stopped and asking me and Greg if we were going to buy suits as well… and they drive like absolute nutters. So basically, we just wanted to be on a beach.
We were driven to the “bus station” in the back of a pickup truck, which was actually a step up from the mental tuk tuk drivers we’d experienced. The “bus station” was in fact a roundabout, but the bus did turn up and we embarked on the long trek south. - Sunday 14th: arrived eventually on Phuket, and headed straight for the beach. The water looked beautiful, and felt better. We’re in Patong, which is an area of Phuket fairly similar to Bangkok, except that you can escape to the beach… which makes a huge difference. We met a guy called Jacob on the bus so he joined our party for now- he’s going to a Thai boxing school soon so is just getting the last bit of partying out of the way! We went out for some drinks and ended up playing Connect 4, which in every bar here it seems, and Jenga with the locals. It ended up being pretty late, pretty messy night, but everyone got home unscathed!
- Monday 15th: woke up pretty late and headed straight for the beach for our first full day of unashamed sun-lounging. It was pretty intense heat, but then there’s always the perfectly clear sea to cool you down… ate some amazing chicken from a street seller, lounged around for a bit longer, and then went in search of a good spot to watch the sun set. This is going to be an ongoing quest I think, but not exactly a burden. Decided to have a quiet night of cards and a couple of beers in the bar next to our hotel. The Connect 4 came out again: so far I think I’ve won 3 games out of god knows how many against the locals, they’re scarily good at it- I was so excited when I won against one girl who’d been wiping the floor with me that I spilt my drink all over the table! This was followed by a round of Tequilas (on the bar owner), however we still managed a relatively early night…. but not before tasting some more amazing street food. 10 baht (about 25p) skewers of beef, pork, and a selection of chicken organs! The heart and the stomach were a bit chewy, but the livers were amazing.
- Tuesday 16th: which is today, if I’ve worked all this out correctly. Woke up to a serious downpour: this is proper rain. It’s stopped now *touch wood*, and after some breakfast we’ll probably hit the beach again. Apparently the rainy season is a week or 2 late this year, but hopefully it’ll be gone by next week. Besides, when it’s 30 degrees you can put up with the occasional shower…. and there’s always Connect 4 to occupy you.
In 1940 The Times published an article entitled Quislings Everwhere, which began the practice of using the surname of Nazi-collaborator Vidkun Quisling as a general term to describe a traitor. The article stated:
“To writers, the word Quisling is a gift from the gods. If they had been ordered to invent a new word for traitor…they could hardly have hit upon a more brilliant combination of letters. Actually it contrives to suggest something at once slippery and tortuous.”
Try substituting the word “Quisling” for “Clegg”. Works, doesn’t it? Although to be fair to Quisling, he at least got made Minister-President of Norway by the Nazis, not just Deputy Minister-President.*
If this all seems a bit harsh on our Cleggy, let me show my working….
I’ve just been watching Five Days That Changed Britain on the BBC, a show about the discussions which went on in the aftermath of this year’s election. In it, Nick Clegg reveals that he had changed his mind about making immediate cuts to the economy before the election, but just neglected to mention this fact to the electorate. Despite saying in March, less than two months before the election, that the Tories’ spending plans were economic masochism, in the intervening few weeks Clegg apparently discovered that he’s actually quite into the kinky stuff (economically speaking of course, he’s not Mark Oaten)
According to Ed Balls, the Lib Dems not only agreed to get on board with these cuts in a coalition with the Tories, they actually demanded immediate cuts as a condition of a deal with Labour. Ed Balls says he was amazed by this. I’m f*cking incandescent! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I want my vote back. On the single most important issue facing whoever got into power in this election, the Liberal Democrats were saying one thing and planning to do another.
Kind of undermines the whole point of a manifesto, don’t you think? We might as well just sack democracy off altogether. I mean say what you will about Stalin but at least the people of the Soviet Union knew exactly where he stood on the economy before he came to power.
If there’s any justice the Lib Dems will get absolutely slaughtered at the next election, and the word “clegg” will appear in the next edition of the Oxford dictionary, with the definition: “like a quisling, but not a very good one.”
* OK, OK… perhaps comparing the Tories to the Nazis and Clegg to a Nazi-collaborator is a little bit much. Or a lot too much. But he’s still a MASSIVE CLEGG.
Regina Spektor’s gig at the O2 Academy in Leeds last night was a very sombre affair, played out against a tragic backdrop. Dan Cho, the cellist who toured with the band, sadly passed away on the 6th July, the day before they were due to play at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Regina and her band resolved to carry on the tour in Dan’s memory, but inevitably the mood of the gig I saw yesterday evening was much more subdued than it would have been in other circumstances. It’s therefore a tribute to the professionalism of Regina and her band that this was still one of the most impressive performances I’ve seen in some time.
The brilliant Nicole Atkins opened up proceedings playing out an accomplished solo set. Nicole has evidently been touring with Regina for some time, and she interspersed her songs with folksy stories about when the two of them were playing roadside diners, rather than 2000-odd capacity venues. Although I wasn’t familiar with her material before the set, her songs had a timeless sort of feel to them which meant that I never found myself losing interest.
Apparently Nicole normally plays with a full band, but I felt like an acoustic gig was the perfect setting for her. Her voice is absolutely gorgeous: very powerful and yet at times achingly vulnerable. A standout track for me was Call Me The Witch, about the ghosts she apparently used to meet around her native New Jersey. It’s OK though, she assures us, she doesn’t see ghosts anymore. She ended on a cover of Roy Orbison’s Cryin’, which as it turned out was a fairly appropriate segue into Regina’s set.
The show opener, Better, was in fact a relatively upbeat number, and it would be wrong to saw that the gig was devoid of joyful- even danceable- moments. Tracks from her latest album Far, such as Eet and Dance Anthem of the 80s, and older songs like On The Radio and show-closer Fidelity all got the crowd moving, and midway through the set Bobbing For Apples took me completely by surprise. Coming off the back of a rapturous version of Après Moi, it was a previously unreleased (I believe) little ditty sung with a real sense of humour (“someone next door’s fucking to one of my songs”) which brought a huge smile to my face.
In fact looking back at the setlist now there seem to have been more of these sorts of tracks than there were melancholic ones, and I have to wonder whether I was viewing the gig differently because I knew about Dan’s death. Nonetheless, it was the more pensive songs of the set which really struck a chord with me. Blue Lips was haunting. Summer in the City was as delicately performed a ballad as you could imagine. Somedays put me in the mind of Blue-era Joni Mitchell. The absolute highlight though was Samson : I’ve never heard a crowd sing along to a song so quietly, desperate to be involved yet equally keen to avoid encroaching on Regina’s perfect vocals.
Understandably, given the circumstances, the gig was almost entirely lacking in between-song-chat. Songs weren’t introduced, and when people in the crowd shouted “we love you” or other such inspired banter, the most it raised was a bashful smile or the occasional wave of the hand. At the very end of the set, Regina made a short tribute to her deceased bandmate and friend, and seemed on the verge of tears. It was an incredibly sad end to the show, and to the crowd’s credit they simply applauded the band off the stage and I didn’t hear a single yelled demand for “one more.” Leaving, it felt as if we had all witnessed something terribly, heart-breakingly beautiful: it’s hard to think of a more fitting tribute the band could pay to their friend than to carry on playing shows like this.
RIP Daniel Cho
Built for the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai, Thomas Heatherwick’s so-called “Seed Cathedral” has won the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Lubetkin Prize for international architecture. This story first came to my attention when I saw what I thought was a prize-winning model of a giant ass on the front page of the BBC News website:
Unfortunate choice of picture aside, the building is actually pretty amazing… It’s made up of 60,000 7.5 metre long transparent rods, suspended from a wooden frame. Each rod has one or several seeds in the tip. By day, the rods draw light inward to light up the inside, and by night there are light sources inside each rod so that the whole thing glows.
Check this video for a tour around the inside and outside of the building (with a nice Lali Puna song as the soundtrack too)
You know how sometimes you listen to an album and think, “how the hell have I not listened to this before now?” Well tonight that album was Nina Simone & Piano, by Nina Simone (erm, and her piano)… I knew a few of the more famous tracks she’s done- Feelin’ Good, I Put a Spell on You, Sinnerman and the like- but I don’t think I’d ever listened to a full album of hers before. Apparently I’ve been missing out.
The whole abum is brilliant but the track I’ve posted above, The Desperate Ones, is the final track and it’s just haunting me. It’s a stripped-down, bleakly beautiful masterpiece, and you need it in your life.
P.S. Pretty sure this isn’t an official video! Not sure who the slightly scary old lady is…
Just weeks after going to their debut gig, I was back in Huddersfield last night to watch what will probably be Asmoto’s last gig. A real shame, but it was another great night.
This time they supported a band from Tokyo called Mothercoat. They are absolutely crazy. Brilliant, but completely off their rockers. If you ever get the chance to see them, you really need to: the recordings really don’t do them justice.
My friend Steve was rather scathing of my decision to start a blog when I saw him at the weekend. The words “pretentious”, “arrogant” and “self-important” were thrown around a fair bit.
However, as you can see above, once Steve actually read my blog he was literally knocked off his chair by it how good it is. He went on to fully retract his earlier comments and has kindly agreed to let me use his endorsement in any promotional activities I might engage in. Thank you, Steve, your support means a lot to me.
