Right so where was i...

So to wrap up the fest thing (because i'm sure nobody really cares), saturday night we saw avail (amazing, guy jumped off the speaker stack into the crowd) and Dillinger Four (awesome as always), got food, saw Municipal Waste (they had a trampoline on stage for people to get higher stage dives off. Awesome) and headed back to the hotel where someone had forgotten to lock the pool area so there was about 1500 people milling around drinking and going nuts. Met a load of people and had the craic, people started letting off fireworks, then there was an impromptu break dancing competition (on concrete - ouch!), then people started firing the fireworks at a cop car, then the cops came up and arrested someone, then they started beating on some other kid, then a cop told me "if you don't like it we got airports all over this great nation where you can fuck off back to your own country". Yipes!! More hotel madness involving people pulling stuff off walls at which point i decided to crash. Sunday was horrible, my fest aids kicked in with a bang (not real aids, just the disease everyone gets every year after fest, your basic chest cough/worn out/headache stuff you get from drinking for three days living on pizza and not sleeping) so no drinking that day for me. Can't remember all the bands i saw but Armalite, North Lincoln and New Mexican Disaster Squad were all deadly, and Small Brown Bike were absolutely amazing. Oh and i picked up the SUV thing i was driving back to orlando in the next day. After the bands me, seamie, brian and angela headed back to the hotel and hung out until we crashed. Got up in the morning, loaded everyone into the SUV, drove to the No Idea house to say goodbye to everyone, and headed for orlando. Have to say it really sucked saying goodbye to everyone from Michigan (brian, angela, john, kevin). Only get to see them once a year and it really isn't enough. If i ever manage a US visa i'll be straight there. Anyways, driving was much easier this time for any number of reasons, so we got back into orlando, dropped off the car, and headed for our hotel. Had decided not to drink that day either but one thing led to another and we ended up taking on this guy from texas and this old mexican guy at this punching machine in a bar. I came a close third, chris our buddy from the desert came first by a country mile, despite being a 130 pound 18 year old against a 250 pound (of muscle) 35 year old.

Anyways, tuesday we made for the airport (hungover to hell) and i said goodbye to seamie and made back for New York. Got the bus into town, booked into the same hostel and headed for the gig i was in town for, a canadian band called The Weakerthans. Arrived waaaay to early so had to suffer through the amazingly boring support bands. Had planned on a few drinks but when the first one cost $9 (about e6.50) i decided to stick to coke. When that cost $5 (about e3.50) i decided to stay thirsty. Weakerthans were deadly, played everything i wanted and stayed on for almost two hours. Got this strange sensation that the floor was moving a good few times with freaked me out as i didn't have travel insurance for the US so if i passed out it'd cost me bigtime, but fortunately i stayed vertical. Went straight back to the hostel after the gig and crashed.

Got up wednesday and headed for the airport on the subway. Went the wrong way once, and managed to get the subway version of the country bus, so arrived at the airport just in time. Still, it only cost $7 (as opposed to $60 for a taxi) and i managed to get off in time so no bother. Flight was 19 hours but flew as each seat had it's own TV console thing where you could pick your own movies, TV shows, games etc. Watched three or four films (blades of glory was good), some TV shows (great history channel thing on Magellan actually), played loads of super mario brothers, watched the sun come up over the clouds (one of my favourite things), stared out the window at Uzbekistan (desert with hills and a random marsh that went on for ages), Afghanistan (desert with hills, could't believe how tiny and depressing looking kabul was, no wonder they're so pissed off), Pakistan (more desert with hills), slept for an hour or two and landed in Bangkok. Getting through immigration took an age but was soon in a taxi on the way to koh san road, the main backpacker stretch. The drive was depressing, bangkok is, to put it kindly, a shithole. Everything i hated about new york times a thousand - concrete, smog, homeless people. Depressing. Koh san road was like the shops section of some dodgy english festival, thousands of makeshift stalls, dredded hippies with bad tattoos everywhere (and you know i hate hippies...). Booked into my hostel, dropped on the bed and fell fast asleep.

So friday i woke up about six am thinking "ah shite, i have two more days here". Got up around nine having (i thought) figured out how to get to the royal palace. As i arrived to the palace two sweaty hours later i realised i'd taken the first turn wrong, turning a five minute stroll into a two hour battle with the sun and the smell (oh dear god the smell). Didn't even go into the palace as was absolutely drenched in sweat and suffering under the noon sun. Walked (the right way) back to the hostel (took about ten minutes). The walk was depressing, homeless people absolutely everywhere, one spot a bunch of people were kinda living on a jetty, kid of about four taking a shit off one side while (presumably) his father fished off the other. Madness. Changed into shorts in the hostel and went looking for a barbers. Two euro got my head shaved, beard trimmed, and neck massaged. Sound. Got some food (e3 for a plate of noodles and chicken, and a large Tiger beer. Sound) and headed back to crash again in the hostel. Got up again at around nine, ate again and walked around for a while. Saw two dudes who looked either english or irish so walked up and asked if they minded if i joined them. Turned out to be nordie (so both english and irish then), spent the night drinking with them, went to an irish bar at the end of the road, good craic but the ratio of guys to, eh, "ladies of the night" was about 1:8 so i headed off and found a bar with a band doing AC/DC covers and had a few more drinks and crashed.

So it's saurday now and i'm drinking coke for breakfast and trying to figure out if there's any point in going into such detail in this. I presume nobody really cares but at the same time, i love reading these things in other people's travel blogs so why not.

Talktcha!!