So, lets start with what I was doing just before the accident. I was in a guesthouse/bar named Ban Luk Kha on Soi Chaiyapruak in Jomtien. I had been drinking a few of these it seems:

I then received a call from a young lady I was kind of involved with for a while, at around 2am, asking me to go and pick here up from Soi 6 just off Jomtien Beach Road, so then I got on this bike:

I then drove down to the beach road, turned right and rode at a steady pace towards Soi 6 to pick up this young lady:

Now this is where it goes blank, I never made it to Soi 6, the next thing I remember was waking up in this place:

This is Pattaya Memorial Hospital, where I stayed for almost 2 days, and was presented with a hospital bill for17,500 Baht when I left, thank god I came around enough to discharge myself before they bankrupt me!

So I left the hospital looking like this:

I then checked myself into a really grotty hotel room, and stayed there for about the next 10 days, eating handfuls of this stuff:

And that’s it, as much as I know, I guess I will never discover just what caused the accident, although I am certain it could not have been my fault. The reasoning for this is simple, nobody came knocking at my hotel door asking for compensation for their broken body/car/motorcycle/dog, and in Thailand nobody would miss the slimmest chance to make some money out of the misfortune of another.

Shocking pictures of stockpiles of Kraton (not sure how you spell it, basically a plant that gives a high similar to amphetamines), guns and ammo confiscated by the police, and the army sitting cooling their heals.

It’s only a matter of time before the government decides it is going to have to lose face over this, and order in the troops. Last time the army hit the streets in the name of politics they pulled off a bloodless coup, I can’t see them resolving this current mess without pulling the trigger.

We were planning a three week vacation, we have cancelled these plans now, we don’t want to risk getting caught up in anything on our travels.

Anyway, this was my first visa run to Cambodia, and it was easy, it took me 3 hours. I jumped on my motorcycle and rode 65km to the Cambodian border at Chong Chom, spent 30 minutes crossing over and back and then came home to Surin, so much easier than the old Burma visa runs I had to do while I was living on Koh Phangan!

I just found these pictures on my mobile phone, I had forgotten I had taken them, they are from our Thailand tour earlier this year. The picture of Leon on the left, was taken somewhere in the mountains on the way to Khon Khaen, we had just driven through a hill tribe village, and stopped to buy him that rather colourful hat he is wearing! The big orange thing behind him is Nuth’s head, ok Nuth’s scarf, not here head.

This part of the journey was just crazy, steep hills and our little sarleng having to tackle them in first gear, we started a short 50km run across the mountains with a full tank of gasoline, when we got to the other side, we were running on fumes, and it had taken us something like four hours to do this one small stretch. I guess once we got to the other side you could  say we had finally reached Isaan, things definitely changed once we had driven down the far side of the mountain, the language for one, they don’t speak Thai in Isaan, they speak a mixture of local dialects.

I also found this picture, it’s a view of the infamous Bridge Over the River Kwai, which was the site of the death railway prisoner camps, back in the war. This is in Kanchanaburi, which is a strange place really, a lot of the visitors are here to see the war cemeteries, where thousands of allied troops are buried, a lot of older people, possibly coming to visit the last resting place of their fathers or grandfathers. The war museum is quite shocking at times, especially some of the photographs and models of the slave camps, really terrible things were done to the prisoners, it’s no wonder not many of them survived. We actually took a trip on a train along the death railway, it’s all very peaceful now, certainly no indication that tens of thousands of people died building it.

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We are about 400km east of Bangkok, right in the middle of one of the largest rice farming areas in South East Asia, very poor though, people starve here every year.

We visited many places in Thailand and I will write several blog posts about the trip over the coming week.

The second big thing to happen since my last update, is that we have moved away from Koh Phangan. We now live in Surin, which is a town in the Isaan province of Thailand. We did this for a few reasons, but mostly because we both realised that Koh Phangan has very little in common with Thailand, it’s a westerners playground.

So apart from these two things, life is pretty much the same as before, Leon is growing at an alarming rate and turning into quite a character!

I thought about this a little bit and realised I haven’t seen as much as I would have liked too either. So and idea started to form. On the way back from lunch we popped into the local metalworkers and asked how much it would cost to have one of the sidecars they build for scooters made, they are a metal frame and are used to carry cargo or people. I decided the price was good so ordered one. So we are going to take the scooter, with the big add on side frame, and myself, Nuth and little Leon will go on a 6 week tour of Thailand.

I have to say, I’m rather excited!

I’m actually quite jealous of him as he has some really cool plans. He has hired a car in Bangkok and is going to drive up to Chain Ma and Chaing Rai in it, spending a few days exporting on the way. He then travels down to Phuket for a few days, then across to Pattaya and finally down to the south to visit both Koh Samui and me on Koh Phangan.

What a great journey to be undertaking, I bet it’s a lot of fun! I wish I was going with him! I don’t think Nuth would be very impressed with me though if I old here I was going off on holiday for a month.

They are pretty basic, just a hut on the beach with a bed, a mosquito net, a fan and a bathroom. But they are right on the beach about 10 metres from the sea, really nice.

I have no idea if Steve is still coming over, Winchy tells me that he hasn’t even booked flight yet so who knows? If he leaves it too late I might not be able to get him a booking at the same resort.

I decided to use overnight sleeper trains for this little venture, on the way I took my usual 2nd class air-con lower bunk ticket but coming back with the baby I decided to try 1st class.

So we got a compartment to ourselves, 2 beds, wash basin and a properly sound proof carriage for about 200 Baht more than a 2nd class ticket.

I can definitely recommend this as an excellent way to travel around Thailand, really pretty stress free and cheap as chips!