Hap Working The World

No, Mandy is not pregnant, I’m not pregnant, but I havea new baby.  Imagine if a motorcross dirt bike and a scooter were to make love, the result would be my new baby. Confused? I tend to have that effect of people sometimes. What I’m trying to say is that we got a new motorbike yesterday and I’m like a little boy with his new christmas present.

Anyway here’s a photo, now you will understand where I was going with the whole dirt bike meets scooter story. The new mean machine takes the place of the scooter and now means I can explore more of the rutted out steep island roads, well I was exploring them before, but now I can have more exploring success. Woop woop

I only have an hour on the internet, so I apologise for my grammar and verbal Diarrhoea.

Apparently there’s some riots going on in Bangkok. I’m Ok, in fact I’m bloody great, I’m on an island, Bangkok is a world away and no doubt the media portrays it as being worse than it is.

I love being removed from the media, I find there to be nothing more depressing than sitting down and watching the 6pm news. Riots, war, murders, economic crisis! Ok, so that’s whats happening, but I’m sure there’s also something good happening as well, but I suppose that doesn’t sell. Have you ever watched the news and be filled with a warm fuzzy feeling, “this is a great world we live in”. The way I look at it, if you d0n’t watch the news it’s not happening, there’s no economic crisis on Ko Tao.

The only thing that’s been blowing up is my lap top charger! Urrgghhh talk about frustrating, that’s two laptop chargers in two weeks. So that means I have to order a new one and be told everyday for a week that it’s arriving tomorrow, haha.

I have to keep this short as I’m currently about to explore the world of being an electrician. I’m off to the hardware store to buy some materials to ground our bungalows electricity, and thus will hopefully prevent my future lap top chargers from burning up. So if you don’t hear from me in the next couple of weeks I have either electrocuted myself, or more probably I’m still waiting on my charger to arrive.

Don’t worry mum, the long haired guy at the island computer store gave me real good instructions on how to ground the electricity, “just chuck a wire out the window, join it to a metal stake, bang it into the ground, then buy a orange adaptor, join the wire to a little metal loop at the bottom of that, and that should work”.

Also, thank you to those people who have emailed me and informed me of the New Zealand Antarctica recruitment. I’m already onto it, I’ve been waiting for this time to roll around since last year when I applied. So fingers crossed, hopefully my lap tops back in action so I can apply, or more importantly the island has internet.

It’s great to know people are looking out for me, and conspiring to help me achieve my goal. Thank you. It is those little emails and replys that I get that keep giving me hope that I will get to Antarctica, as that will be the toughest continent to get to. Thank you.

When the thought of living in Thailand first popped into my head, I had visions of a little wooden bungalow on a golden sand beach with palm trees swaying in the warm tropical breeze. I dreamt that I would skip 3 metres to the crystal clear water like a little girl in a flowing dress floating through a field of daisies. In the water I would splash about overcome with joy like a special needs kid the first time swimming in the ocean. After all the frolicking I would retire to my hammock that’s strung between two palm trees where a little Thai lady would appear with a tropical fruit salad drizzling with freshly squeezed lime juice. Then the monkey’s would start performing for me juggling coconuts…………………………………………………OK, sorry, I put this rambling down to reading too much Hunter S Thompson (Author of Fare and loathing in Las Vegas) and Paulo Coehlo and having gone 10 days without my laptop for writing.

The reality is that I’m living in a concrete bungalow, which may I add is a sign of affluence in Thailand as the less wealthy use the cheaper materials of wood to build their bungalows – Well done Hap, you’ve made in life if you’re living in a concrete bungalow in Thailand, haha J. The bungalow is not on the beach, this was just a dream, the beaches on the island are taken up by the resorts, bars, restaurants and traveller accommodation.

As with anywhere you call home, you love your home, or in this case bungalow, or we like to call it a Mansion. What I love most about our Mansion is that it only costs us $240 (Australian dollars, as that’s what I’m spending at the moment). Our bungalow is nestled in amongst trees, don’t be fooled into thinking of lush rainforest, no just trees.

As mentioned in a previous post our bungalow is home to all critters large and small. I think with my long hair and “beard” the animals have me mistaken for Noah. The Arc opens in the morning with the cicada and rooster chorus. Following this centipedes, cats, cockroaches, chickens, dogs, lizards, ants, frogs, peacocks, maggots, geckos, mosquito’s, beetles and these little gerbil creatures come to say hi. My personal favourite is Annie, our friendly neighbour who lives next door in the grass. Annie is a goat, he comes over, makes himself at home, walks around the kitchen, head butts the bungalow walls and hangs out. You may wonder why I have named a male goat Annie, it’s Thailand the home of lady boys.

It is no coincidence that in the previous paragraph I mention lady boys and neighbours. On our first day in the bungalow we were lying in the hammock and our neighbour walked past. I said to Mandy, that looks like the ladyboy from the cabaret we went to when we first arrived in Ko Tao. Sure enough, looking back at the photos from that night, it was. That’s me with him/her below. Her/his name is Ban, he/she is real lovely and lives with her boyfriend Tommy. So that’s our interesting neighbourhood.

I have tried to upload a video of our bungalow onto YouTube but it won’t upload, it’s been uploading for 2 hours and still hasn’t uploaded, so will try again soon.

They call the day songkran, which is Thai New Year, and by the Thai calendar yesterday they were celebrating the first day of the year 2053 – shit the last 44 years went quick for me. For Songkran the whole country shuts down to celebrate and have a water fight. It doesn’t matter if your wearing nappies and crawling or if you have false teeth and use a walking stick, everyone gets into it.

Most people have a water gun, but the seasoned professionals arm themselves with hoses, talcum powder, and buckets of iced water. Trucks drive around with armies of dancing people in the back soaking people from the massive water buckets. Like an African nation in civil war there are road blocks along the road where passing trucks are made to pull over so the occupants can be washed down and have their faces smeared with a colourful paint by a smiling Thai person exclaiming “happy new year”.

I only took 3 photos from the whole day as my camera wasn’t waterproof, and telling someone to not throw water on you because your holding a camera doesn’t work. It was funny seeing travellers that had just arrived, obviously oblivious that it was Songkran. As they are carrying their suitcases through the streets and are NOT appreciating getting soaked by the drunken revellers. The poor travellers must have thought they had landed on some kind of island that’s a mental institution. The funny thing is that the more someone says don’t get me, the more they get soaked.

I’m back in action, I have my laptop back, yay!

As you can see I have been doing some interior decorating of my blog. Instead of seeing me dancing with Mexican orphans at sunset, you now see the Thailand flag. It was meant to have the island of Koh Tao in the background but I couldn’t fit it in, Koh Tao is where I’m currently living. The idea behind the title photo from now on is to represent the current chapter.

For those of you unfamiliar with my blog, the chapters to the right are summaries of the specific periods of my journeys in which I have lived and worked in certain countries, I call these the chapters of my journey. The current chapter is where I am currently living and working in which you can follow on this home page with these regular posts. When I leave a country, is when that chapter will be written, so when I leave Thailand I will write the Thailand chapter. I don’t bother writing chapters on holidays taken, for example the 2 weeks spent in Korea, or the days in Malaysia, etc.

I’m out of here, it’s Songkran today which is the Thai new year. From what I hear it’s one big water fight, everyone walking around with water guns and buckets of ice cold water soaking each other etc whilst enjoying a few brews.

I have posted about 5 posts that I will drip feed to the blog. What I do these days is write all my posts offline at the Bungalow and then make my weekly pilgrimage over to the pier where I get on the internet and upload them all. So keep checking for post updates over the next week. I’m trying to get some photos up, but the internet is quite slow.