Two words instantly spring to mind when I look at this place, the word shit and the word hole, put together to make shit hole and that’s exactly what it is.

I know these people are poor but is that any excuse for piling your garbage up right outside your front door and burning it once a week? Why not carry it that extra 10 metres and put it at the back of the house? This place is just full of garbage, when the wind blows the garbage pile around they just leave it where it lands.

Chickens, I have no problem with chickens, but a big problem with letting them walk around crapping everywhere inside the house.

And while we are on the subject of crap, lets talk about how they let their babies take a dump, right onto the floor in the only place that has something other than mud to sit on, the same place they sit on the floor and eat or let the children sleep in the daytime, fucking disgusting.

Seriously it’s a horrible place, it looks bad, it smells bad and I cannot imagine it being anything other than unhealthy. I will not be coming back here in a hurry. I was going to allow Nuth to stay here for a couple more months while the baby grows a bit before undertaking the journey back to Koh Phangan but I’ve told her no, I will pick her up in 3 weeks, no way is my child staying in a place that is little more than a public toilet for every human and animal that cares to use it.

Consider this another lead up post to the one I plan to make about Nuth’s family who I met for the first time a few days ago.

Just to set the scene for the coming entry I thought I would give you all a glimpse of what I was offered for breakfast the morning after I arrived….

Yep, it’s a bowl of fried cockroach, what made it even more sickening is I saw them being cooked… alive…

I think I have finally decided to scrap my current desktop PC and switch to using a high spec laptop as a desktop replacement.

There are several reasons for this. Primarily it’s a power problem, even using a UPS the power here on the island makes using a desktop very difficult. Quite often it’s hours at a time that I cannot use the PC and work suffers because of this. At least using a laptop with an extended life battery I should be good throughout all but the longest power outage.

Another reason for this decision is one of security, I just do not think it’s safe leaving a whole desktop rig in a house that is nothing more than wooden planks over a concrete frame, you can open the windows (well shutters we don’t have glass) with a spoon if you need to, really not the kinda place you want to leave a few thousand pounds worth of equipment at night when you are out, especially as it is in the jungle, nobody would witness any theft.

Usually when I buy a laptop I look for something cheap that will do the job for 3 years, it’s then a throwaway item but this time around I need to be a little more specific. I need a decent dual core processor, at least 2GB of RAM, a largish HDD and definitely a pretty high spec GPU.

I’ve been looking at a fully upgraded Dell Vostro, this would come in at a little over £1000 and would include a 256MB Nvidia 8600, although I would really prefer an 8700. A friend of mine just purchased a Toshiba with an 8700 and it runs very well indeed.

Maybe something will be available from Dell by the time I visit the UK in March.

I’m currently staying in a hospital suite in Surin following the birth of my Son. I’m going to keep this a very short post as I want to keep it about completely good things about the birth, I’ll leave the discussion of my in-laws for later.

So here he is….

He was born at 8:21PM on 11th of November 2007, he weighed 3550 Grams and was 53cm long.

He doesn’t eat very much, he doesn’t cry very much either. Because Nuth had to have a caesarean the Doctor has told me that it’s my job to stay awake all night and take care of the baby. It’s pretty tiring!