Phuket 13 April

Well much water under the bridge since Cambodia, crossed uneventfully back into Thailand though that last hour and a half to the Poi pet border is as bad as everyone tells you. Rumour has it that some airline or other has paid off the government in order to keep the road in this condition, suffice to say my bum had a great massage and a bottle of palm sugar smashed in the bus, luckily only a smidge got on my backpack, the two Danish girls were not so lucky.

Made it to Bangkok only to turn around and head straight down here for this job interview, I have been offered the job, pretty much the same deal as last year and pretty much the same pay in the end, the school is much better resourced but the holidays are not quite as generous as they could be, a lot more staff, 25 teachers 4 or 5 teaching exactly the same level as me, so the support structure would be much better, the year would not finish till the end of march, I'm still dithering on this decision.

As usual I went on line to see if I had any mail and sure enough someone had stolen my credit card (eep) and my credit card was showing a lot less money than it should (double eep), so I rang all the emergency support lines and now I have to fill in statutory declarations, fraud reports etc in order to try and get it back. I guess after all the time I have spent travelling sooner or later this was bound to happen and I am very happy that it was merely my credit card not my computer or my usb with all my photos of the last year, or my ipod or my kidneys (like you hear can happen in the back streets of some dodgy Indian cities). One must after all maintain a sense of perspective (after of course wishing that karmic revenge will swiftly be visited upon the villain).


Today is the first day of Songkran or what used to be Thai new year, everybody goes crazy, kids drive round in the back of pick ups squirting people with high powered water guns and the people on the street fire back with hoses and anything else that comes to hand, add copious amounts of alcohol into the mix and well it's very "sanook" (fun) but also highly dangerous, two more days to go. But at least they have stopped measuring the death toll with a "target" figure next to it as they did last year which was just too surreal.

The swiss man who got seven years in prison (reduced from 50) for spray painting black paint on the Kings picture haws been pardoned and sent home.

Coincidentally two more days till my dive trip to the similans, the weather has been really rainy the last few days and the skys quite leaden, the national park closes at the end of the month, I hope we have not left it too late in the season!

Anyway suffice to say Phuket is quite a pretty town, it has pockets of old Sino-Potuguese architecture, I am actually staying in a rather attractive historic building, but there is a crazy Ugandan down the hall who keeps following me about like a puppy which is a bit freaky, his Mother died recently and I think he's looking for some one to transfer all that emotional baggage to, thankfully I have this dive trip to escape to tomorrow. The local transport though is expensive and so everybody pretty much drives round on those little scooter motorbikes, I am reluctant to buy one as the death toll for foreigners on those things here is horrendous (possibly because they let any fool [like me?] drive one), but at least I actually own a licence that says I have passed a test and am competent to ride one, I suspect most of these guys don't.

Anyway, everywhere was shut today so tomorrow I will endeavour to find somewhere to post this, take care dudes.
Love N.J.

"So it goes" section:
R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut Jr, drank like a fish, smoked like a train, and still clocked 84, "Lonesome no more" I take it