sabaai dii my friends!
im not sure if my last email in bangkok came through or not but just letting you know that after a long gruelling 16 hour(yes it was 16 in the end)bus ride we made it to the far reaches of laos where im now sat,not quite so stuck to the chair as a, its night time and b, its alot cooler up in these here parts ya know!anyway the bus wasn't the most luxurious but it wasn't the worst ride i've ever had either infact allbeit sporadic intervals i did actually manage a few moments sleep here and there!i only know that for sure as i had a few crazy dreams that shook me a little from side to side on my awakening!: ) its all good,good or bad i still love to dream!anyway,there we were dropped off by the bus in no mans land bang in the centre of what i hear but am not entirely sure is the capital of laos and its called vientianne.staraight away out of my comfort zone my back crippling me,five different tuk tuk drivers(or jumbo's as they're called here)hard on our cases for our freshly delivered back sides to part with some cash!not knowing any of the local lingo or dialect i was a whole world away from my comfort zone of good ol' thailand!hence yes,we got ripped off bigtime(i say that,it was still only a pound each!)and the guy took us around the block after choosing a cheap guesthouse from the lonely planet guide(or the bible as we hippy kinds know it!:)and pretty much dropping us off in the same place!haha little did we know we were almost standing next to it as it was about twenty yards around the corner!haha no wonder they were having a damn good giggle at our expense!weeeeeell,it was worth the money to see them all happy hey!anyway after a day of trying to recover some sort of comfort zone by getting stuck into the language i ended up with a whole page of local words,some the same as thai that mean the same and some the same that mean other things so i'm a little confused somewhat but after 12 hours work i appear to be on the right track im glad to say!the city it seems,after a little pedestrian investigation isn't actually that big whatsoever and you can pretty much get to where ever you want by foot and the people here are beautiful,kind and funny!whoever told me about this place and including the authors of books ive studied weren't kidding about this being one of the last untouched places on the planet!just before sunrise i hiked off on my lonesome and sat with my first laos beer and sat in the centre by a big water fountain surrounded by flowers to take in some of the atmosphere,and that i did!whoa and i mean this from the bottom of my heart,this place has such a vibrant atmosphere,i felt myself overcome by the awe inspiring energy that surrounded me,hearing nothing but childrens cries of untamed laughter that filled the air as families played throughout the streets and smiles were the order of the day.what an extremely happy place,it truly seems untouched by the outside world and for me,how everywhere on this wonderful planet should be!children with absolutely nothing playing merrily throughout without a care in the world!the people here are so patient,accepting and inspiring and i suppose this is why i am wriring this to you as i myself have ,in only a few hours,been inspired!!i did not know what to expect when i got off that bus,but one things for sure,and that is that i have merely touched the surface of this deep ocean of wonder and i cannot wait to dive a little deeper!
tomorrow we head for veng vieng (spelt wrong probably) to meet a couple of irish friends and i will keep you updated on my progress should i encounter an email place there!
take care one and allyou can sleep now as ive probably just bored you to tears!: )
much love
damo x
Saturday, 18 February 2006
Friday, 17 February 2006
weeeeeeeeeeeeeell!:)
hey again my friends!
firstly can i ask once more if people could please discard this email address and only send mail to my hotmail address as i only use this site to send messages and prefer to recieve them on the hotmail one as im more familiar with,thanks so much and also my emails are not getting through to some of you and for that i'm sorry but theres not much i can do about that regretfully!thankyou xx
anyway right now i'm stuck fast to this rather comfortable chair i must say by my own sweat!hmmmm nice!yes thats it i'm back in bangkok for my first border run for another months visa,only instead of doubling back into thailand we've decided to venture far and wide into our so far unchartered territory that is the country of laos!our time in koh pha ngan was a good one to say the least!although on counting,counting again and about 5 more recounts of our funds we have welcomed with open arms a trip to a country thats generally cheaper than thailand as on numerous inspections of our funds we've come to the conclusion that we have to slow down the spending a little!did i say a little i meant bloody loads!we have somehow managed to spend over double our monthly budget for the month so laos will be welcome with open arms as it is alot cheaper and hopefully we can recover some!:) let us hope so hey!on saying all of this i must state that we had a damn fine time in the process of spending this money!we have also gained many wonderful friends in the process so for this i have no regrets!usually i go into alot more detail of my experiences but to be honest,its a little hazy and not only that i'm writing this in a hurry because in 1 hour we jump on a bus for 14 hrs to vien tienne in laos which will explain all of the spellin mistakes etc! not really im just no good at typing!:) yes well so thats about it so far apart from earlier ross thought he'd lost his paasport for the second time today!and on inspection of my valuables pouch i realised mine wasn't there either!a few seconds of nervous shaking later my memory kicked into gear(for a change)and i realised it was at the travel agents awaiting a laos visa!!nice one ross,i had to throw a perfectly good pair of pants away after that!(only joking.......they were crap! : )
anyway we must offski so take care of yourselves n remember that we love all y'all
easy now
love me xx
firstly can i ask once more if people could please discard this email address and only send mail to my hotmail address as i only use this site to send messages and prefer to recieve them on the hotmail one as im more familiar with,thanks so much and also my emails are not getting through to some of you and for that i'm sorry but theres not much i can do about that regretfully!thankyou xx
anyway right now i'm stuck fast to this rather comfortable chair i must say by my own sweat!hmmmm nice!yes thats it i'm back in bangkok for my first border run for another months visa,only instead of doubling back into thailand we've decided to venture far and wide into our so far unchartered territory that is the country of laos!our time in koh pha ngan was a good one to say the least!although on counting,counting again and about 5 more recounts of our funds we have welcomed with open arms a trip to a country thats generally cheaper than thailand as on numerous inspections of our funds we've come to the conclusion that we have to slow down the spending a little!did i say a little i meant bloody loads!we have somehow managed to spend over double our monthly budget for the month so laos will be welcome with open arms as it is alot cheaper and hopefully we can recover some!:) let us hope so hey!on saying all of this i must state that we had a damn fine time in the process of spending this money!we have also gained many wonderful friends in the process so for this i have no regrets!usually i go into alot more detail of my experiences but to be honest,its a little hazy and not only that i'm writing this in a hurry because in 1 hour we jump on a bus for 14 hrs to vien tienne in laos which will explain all of the spellin mistakes etc! not really im just no good at typing!:) yes well so thats about it so far apart from earlier ross thought he'd lost his paasport for the second time today!and on inspection of my valuables pouch i realised mine wasn't there either!a few seconds of nervous shaking later my memory kicked into gear(for a change)and i realised it was at the travel agents awaiting a laos visa!!nice one ross,i had to throw a perfectly good pair of pants away after that!(only joking.......they were crap! : )
anyway we must offski so take care of yourselves n remember that we love all y'all
easy now
love me xx
Thursday, 2 February 2006
big buckets of fun!
hello again one and all!
firstly can i say a big thankyou to the people that have written and sent their wisdom and their love as it is greatly appreciated!im not sure if everyone is actually recieving this mail either so sorry if anyone gets missed out!well,i hope you're all doing great!
i sit now on a quiet beach on the north east of the beautiful island that is koh pha ngan on my favourite beach of them all! tong nai pan yai
there are two bays and yai and noi (big and small) but this one definately wins hands down!well from the last time i wrote i must say im a hell of a lot more layed back and chilled hell,it took me this long to venture this far along the beach to email!also its more expensive here so i tried to pit it off until i scooted over to the town but alas the rain is keeping us here after giving us yet another excuse to do really not that much at all! ; )
aaaaah yawn sorry where was i yes well we had a little test already and only 4 days into the trip!what a nightmare!we headed for the hualampong train station in bangkok and sat on the floor with about a thousand other people playing guitar and didge and havin a little sing along and waited for the absent train to arrive,well two or three infact as every train was hours late.when it finally arrived we picked our bunks and met some cool nepalese guys from kathmandu and ross got the guitar out and started to have a little jam,this was about 11pm by this point but all of a sudden the group just grew into a full on procession as guitars,pan pipes tambhorines and the likes started to ring out through the cabins!man what a great jam,blues,rock,folk you name it we sang it until the early hours!by far one of the best journeys of my life!im trying to sing a little but my voice sucks!hehe aaah well after we all left the train most of the people walking extra quickly probably from my didge playing : ) we then waited on a street corner for a bus to the port.meanwhile,rossco bless him the decides to have a check of essentials ie passport etc hmmmmm
this revealed a problem!not a small one either as our beloved rossco had indeed lost his passport!noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
not good!now this then meant a whole world of pain for us as no sooner as we'd taken our first glimpse of the sea and first breath of the ocean mist then now we had to turn our sorry arses back around and endure another gruelling time of bag carrying and showerless skin and go straight back to bangkok!nice!well luckily for us (thanks dave!!)we had photocopies of our passports so it wasn't a mojor problem getting a replacement just alot of money and hassle.we decided to head for the island anyway,why not!i have friends here and after a visit the next day we managed to locate the passport by shear miracle!well we did both wish upon two shooting stars the night before and prayed a hell of a lot!the craziest shooting stars ive ever seen bar none!like fire works trailers right across the sky!yes so our last day in bangkok ross changed some money on the bank kiosk on the street and walked off without his passport!man are we lucky to see that again!well,we haven't yet but its there waiting for us so we thought we'd stay and get some beach life for a bit first!its not as expensive here as i'd thought after fours years absence which is all good with me!we have a big group of us here at the bamboo huts and a cool irishman that lives up to his national reputation for sure!the only thing is my willpower is on holiday mode so buckets of sang som have been known for breakfast and mind you our second night ended up into about a forty,fifty hour epic!weeeeeeeeeell we were celebrating the recovery of the passport and as we'd saved the money on travel then we treated ourselves!its a bit dangerous when you can help yourself to beer 24hours a day and just write it down on your bill and pay when you leave!hmmmmm anyway,once again my love goes out to one and all,my apologies for the lack of individual emails but this one message will cane my budget and i feel that ive babbled monotanously (probably spelt wrong!) for way too long and i'm putting nyself to sleep so i'll be off!i think to hussle some on the pool table that they have by the beach!
adios amigos
love,light and a sang som bucket
dimson
xxxxxx
firstly can i say a big thankyou to the people that have written and sent their wisdom and their love as it is greatly appreciated!im not sure if everyone is actually recieving this mail either so sorry if anyone gets missed out!well,i hope you're all doing great!
i sit now on a quiet beach on the north east of the beautiful island that is koh pha ngan on my favourite beach of them all! tong nai pan yai
there are two bays and yai and noi (big and small) but this one definately wins hands down!well from the last time i wrote i must say im a hell of a lot more layed back and chilled hell,it took me this long to venture this far along the beach to email!also its more expensive here so i tried to pit it off until i scooted over to the town but alas the rain is keeping us here after giving us yet another excuse to do really not that much at all! ; )
aaaaah yawn sorry where was i yes well we had a little test already and only 4 days into the trip!what a nightmare!we headed for the hualampong train station in bangkok and sat on the floor with about a thousand other people playing guitar and didge and havin a little sing along and waited for the absent train to arrive,well two or three infact as every train was hours late.when it finally arrived we picked our bunks and met some cool nepalese guys from kathmandu and ross got the guitar out and started to have a little jam,this was about 11pm by this point but all of a sudden the group just grew into a full on procession as guitars,pan pipes tambhorines and the likes started to ring out through the cabins!man what a great jam,blues,rock,folk you name it we sang it until the early hours!by far one of the best journeys of my life!im trying to sing a little but my voice sucks!hehe aaah well after we all left the train most of the people walking extra quickly probably from my didge playing : ) we then waited on a street corner for a bus to the port.meanwhile,rossco bless him the decides to have a check of essentials ie passport etc hmmmmm
this revealed a problem!not a small one either as our beloved rossco had indeed lost his passport!noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
not good!now this then meant a whole world of pain for us as no sooner as we'd taken our first glimpse of the sea and first breath of the ocean mist then now we had to turn our sorry arses back around and endure another gruelling time of bag carrying and showerless skin and go straight back to bangkok!nice!well luckily for us (thanks dave!!)we had photocopies of our passports so it wasn't a mojor problem getting a replacement just alot of money and hassle.we decided to head for the island anyway,why not!i have friends here and after a visit the next day we managed to locate the passport by shear miracle!well we did both wish upon two shooting stars the night before and prayed a hell of a lot!the craziest shooting stars ive ever seen bar none!like fire works trailers right across the sky!yes so our last day in bangkok ross changed some money on the bank kiosk on the street and walked off without his passport!man are we lucky to see that again!well,we haven't yet but its there waiting for us so we thought we'd stay and get some beach life for a bit first!its not as expensive here as i'd thought after fours years absence which is all good with me!we have a big group of us here at the bamboo huts and a cool irishman that lives up to his national reputation for sure!the only thing is my willpower is on holiday mode so buckets of sang som have been known for breakfast and mind you our second night ended up into about a forty,fifty hour epic!weeeeeeeeeell we were celebrating the recovery of the passport and as we'd saved the money on travel then we treated ourselves!its a bit dangerous when you can help yourself to beer 24hours a day and just write it down on your bill and pay when you leave!hmmmmm anyway,once again my love goes out to one and all,my apologies for the lack of individual emails but this one message will cane my budget and i feel that ive babbled monotanously (probably spelt wrong!) for way too long and i'm putting nyself to sleep so i'll be off!i think to hussle some on the pool table that they have by the beach!
adios amigos
love,light and a sang som bucket
dimson
xxxxxx
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