Backpacking

First off I'm still in Pattaya, sure I planned on leaving a week ago but the lure of bar after bar has been to great and the destruction of my liver is well under way. It's my birthday today which after 25 isn't something you like to admit but I'm hoping if I tell enough people it might result in a free beer or two. I was downing beers at my regular bar last night and 3 members of the staff had birthdays which means you're "encouraged" to buy them drinks and place 100 baht notes around there necks on a money necklace. I have a feeling that this tradition only applies to staff members but dammit I'm still going to hit that bar tonight with money necklace in place and hope for the best.

Bushy has requested that I skip the bar stories (I have plenty) and maybe focus a bit on the culture and activities that don't involve intoxication so we'll indulge in some of that. Yesterday I took a baht bus to a huge golden bhudda up in the hills, the suckers massive and he's on a nice spot that gives you a great view of Pattaya so I took a boatload of photo's of both Mr Bhudda and the view. I was encouraged to pray to Bhudda and attempted to do so but the sitting style used to pray in just wasn't made for my wimpy ankles. So there we are in this temple, about 50 or so Thai's and me the only whiteboy and we all kneel with the top of your feet on the ground and head down with an incense stick. It's totally silent until my feet start screaming in agony and I roll over clutching them and gasping whilst dropping my incense stick and annoying everyone present.

Sorry Bhudda!

After offending Bhudda, myself and my bargirl friend
Kwan decided to hit the water park with her room-mate (the crazy one) and her latest boyfriend Peter. It was good to actually have someone to chat to as normally it's the three of us and I sit there whilst they take the piss out of me in Thai heh. The water park was good fun and had slides and aqua tubes and even sported a couple of roller coasters. Swimming is so much better now with short hair, I no longer have to worry about the knot-fest that normally results in a swim and I spent ages in the water. Kwan wanted to go on the huge slide so I joined her but I hit the lip of the slide a bit to fast, got slightly airborne and smashed my elbow on the side of the slide I'm now sporting a good sized graze. Last night at the bar I was telling another guy about the slide incident and he whipped out his forearm and showed me a big scar which he said he got on the very same slide haha.

We also took a ride on the rollercoaster which looked pretty tame but once on it I realised it had some pretty big drops. Sitting in front of us was a teenage russian guy who looked at Kwan with amusement/contempt as she clutched my hand before the ride and clambered into the cart on shaking legs. So we do one revolution of the grid and come back to the start where the operator gives you the choice of doing it again (free of charge). Myself and Kwan were all for it but I looked in front of us and the Russian guy looked like a ghost and waving his arms frantically to get off. We all jumped off and they had a TV monitor where they show a picture of everyones face after the first big drop. I was laughing with hands in the air while Kwan was looking pretty scared but nothing was more funny then the Russian guys face which appeared to be a full blooded scream of fear!

Speaking of Russians, Pattaya is full of them and some of the women are absolutely stunning but I don't even give them a second look. Why you ask?...no I haven't gone queer (yet) but Russian girls are like a lost baby bear or lions cub. They're so cute and you wanna cuddle and touch them and maybe even take them home but you know that SOMEWHERE the momma bear is about and will tear you limb from limb. The momma bear for Russians is always in the form of a big boyfriend and if I've learnt anything from Steven Seagal movies it's not to fuck with Russian guys. Speaking of violence I've been watching heaps of Muai Thai Kickboxing and on the first night I was loving it. Some Thai dude whipped out a spinning backfist and knocked out his opponent and I jumped up and down screaming much to the amusment of the whole bar. After the fight the winner walks around thew ring collecting money from the crowd (typically 100 baht notes) which I happily parted with as he was risking his life/bones in there. As the night went on I started noticing that the fight weren't real, the punches and kicks were always partially blocked and the fight always ended in a spectacular fashion to dazzle the crowd like a flying elbow or spinning manfist. I guess they can't have fighters going all out each night as the injury list would be huge but I still found it dissapointing. That was until some white guys started stepping in the ring and there was no faking it here, they were obviously over to train or on a kickboxing camp and gave it there all.

The first white guy outweighed the thai by about 40kg's but still got the shit smack out of them, you can't believe how loud and strong these guys kick and punch until you see it in person. Funniest fight of the night involved a young white guy who appeared to start strong against the Thai, he nailed the Thai fighter with a few leg kicks which caused him to limp badly and reduced his mobility. It stunk of fakeness to me and I thought maybe they had paid the Thai fighter to lose, the whiteboy was getting more and more cocky and whipping out reverse kicks and smiling to the crowd. Then it got into the final round and the Thai fighter upto this point had looked shit and had done nothing, then at the start of the final round he went berserk and pummeled the shit out of his opponent. One of his kicks nearly bloody decapitated the young guy and the ref quickly called off the fight and everyone realised the Thai was just playing possum as he's used to doing and turned it on when he needed to...cheeky fucker.

As I mentioned yesterday I have shaved my head, I'd been considering it from day one in Thailand as the humidity is killer and long hair is unbearable. So I hit a salon yesterday and told the girl I wanted it all gone, she looked at me like I was crazy and went "all gone" which I nodded to and said "shave it!". So she went for a number 4 and I told her shorter then a number 3 as still to long so I settled on a number 2. Actually looks quite good and I'm now being called "handsum man" even more now. The reception girl at my hotel didn't even recognise me and asked if I had a room there heh and then nearly died of shock when I told her who I was. That was nothing compared to the reaction at my regular bar where the girls wouldn't stop going on about it and one suggested that SHE barfine ME haha. I also shoved off my poormans goatee so I looked vey different now and heaps younger and now I just wonder why the hell I didn't shave my head years ago!.

Pictures will soon be added but the computers here are very slow so it makes simple processes that much difficult. Which I find in Thailand is often the case, even things like going to the toilet at the water park are difficult when rules such as "you must buy toilet paper before using toilet" are in place, I hate to think about how many people didn't read that sign before dropping the kids off at the pool. I better bail as me and Peter are ditching the girls and hitting some bars so I'll let you know how that goes.

I was sitting at a bar sipping a thai beer and taking in the sights (bootie call!) and I looked over the bar and there's this irish lookin' guy staring at me, skinny and covered in tats and he looked just downright fuckin' hard like bigby and he continues staring at me before grunting, sliding his beer aside and gets up and stumbles towards me. He walks right up into my face and says

"What the fook are yew doin'?"

"Errr drinking a beer"

"aye ya daft cunt, yew here for holiday and drinkin' by yew lonesome, I won't fookin' stand fer it"

"Ummm ok?"

"A wee little fella like yew needs to get out and go fookin' hard, yew understand?"

"Yup..Go hard"

"That's right yew wee pups need to start early, now get out there matey"

• Shakes my hand no less then 15 fucking times nearly breaking it*

On another note I just shaved my head, that's right hombre's I've gone from a hippy to someone that now looks about 14 (I went for a number 2 shave)

So the post is long overdue but anyone who read the former drunkanddisorderly website knows this isn't uncommon as I'm prone to bouts of pure undiluted laziness. I'm currently in Pattaya in Thailand and have been here the last 2 nights and plan on spending a few more here kicking back before heading to the beaches then the landmines of Cambodia. As I mentioned in a previous post my hotel is planted firmly in the rear end of the gay area (heh sorry couldn't help myself). I was aware of this but due to most hotels being booked out for the NYE persiod my options were limited and I'm moving hotels tomorrow. I've got no issues at all with gay people, I mean they have great fashion sense and hairdressing just wouldn't be the same industry without them. I started looking for an Internet Cafe and was checking the signs along the street of my hotel.

Toyboys karaoke...No

Massage 4 men by men...NO

Internet...Bingo

Now I'm sitting here charging up my ipod and updating this blog when I suddenly realised my computer is surrounded of snap shots of men in speedo's. And not the full man either...just a snapshot of a man's crotch in speedo's. Now cmon I can understand a Gay Sauna, a Gay nightclub but a gay internet cafe?!. I'm starting to sound a bit homophobic haha so I'll move on before I offend anyone.

New Years Eve was last night and I'm stuffed, I partied pretty hard and am feeling the effects now and feel like going back to bed despite only getting out at 3pm. I guess I should wind back the clock to last update and continue from there so you can get some ideas on what I've been doing;

I got up early the morning of my flight to Thailand and wanted to charge up my Ipod for the flight but Hong Kong is similar to Singapore in that all the shops stay open late but don't open until about 10am. This is normally fine by me as I prefer to stay out late and sleep in but on this particular morning I had things to do and my plans were foiled. Hong Kong on the whole was very enjoyable but wouldn't recommend it if you dislike crowds or a bit of chaos as the place is non-stop. The people were all very friendly but did find getting a taxi could often be difficult as the drivers spoke very little English so a conversation would go like this;

"Lockhard Road please"

"huh?"

"Lockhard road in Wan Chai"

"huh?"

"I WANT TO GOTO LOCKHARD ROAD IN WAN CHAI!"

"HUH"

In the end that particular driver drove me to another taxi and dumped me on him haha but thankfully that other driver spoke passable English. On my last night in Hong Kong I had a foot massage which really is "Foot contortion torture" and spent the whole session trying to avoid them upgrading me to another massage package. My flight was on time and the plane was only half full so I had a spare seat next to me, I spent the flight reading a John Grisham book that I purchased. I had already finished Dan Brows "Da Vinci Code" and must say it was great and can't believe a book about art and cryptography could of been interesting but it really was.

Customs was straight forward in Thailand and some tout offered me a taxi and when told of my Pattaya destination he offered 2000 but I counted with 1500 and he pays the road tolls. He acted offended and declined so I jumped in the massive taxu queue and think I payed 1200baht plus the toll of 100. The drive took ages as it was peaktime and think all up it took 3 hours to reach Pattaya plus about 40 minutes for my driver to locate the friggin' hotel. Thanks Adrian for smsing me the hotels number, this came in handy but even after 2 calls to the hotel the driver still couldn't get bearings but eventually we got there. The room is really nice but I open my curtains and 3 metres in front if my windows is another window looking straight into a male gym so I haven't opened the curtains since haha. Like Balinese hotels the power to the room is turned off once you remove the key and exit the room and my normal trick of jamming a pen in the sensor didn't work (damn!) so I always return to a hot room. The weathers been overcast but humid and the combination of the heat and seafood has caused me to break into hives again (mother@#$%^&. I'm taking medications to stop it but so far it's done sweet fuck all but the itching hasn't been to bad so it's bearable. The weather also has me contemplating cutting my hair off as the other day it was knot-hell and I just about cut it off on the spot heh.

I was pretty stuffed after the long drive but was anxious to hit the town and see the sights so I wandered out of the gay area and headed into the heart of town. Once I hit the main strip I must admit that my jaw hit the ground, it was bars as far as the eye could see and just hundreds of the hottest girls you can imagine. The girls are everywhere and wear outfits so skimpy that they'd probably get jailed in Oz for indecent exposure. They're of course on the arms of old overweight men with open shirts and tattoo's. Most people find this pretty disgusting but I guess it's just how it is overhere and money talks. The girls make a decent living and the old dudes instead of only attracting old wrinkly women back home get treated like kings by girls old enough to be there daughters (grand daughters in some cases!). Dunno if you'd dig the girls here Justin as I'm betting 8 out of 10 have tattoo's ahha and I often try to guess the girls ages but never get them right, a girl who looks 18 always turns out to be older then me.

I hit a bar or two and resisted the attempts at eye contact by the bar girls and just sat and sipped a beer and took in the sights (and boy is it a sight). Eventually one beer led to 6 and found myself in a packed disco where a thai version of the blackeyed peas were playing, they had 2 african american guys in the band but Fergie had been substituted for a thai chick. I got to chatting to a nice thai girls and we've been kicking it the last few days. The language barrier can make talking difficult and the aussie accent probably doesn't help matters. I'm ashamed to say even after 2 days I don't know the chicks name, I mean she's told me but the combination of my bad memory and intoxication has made me forget. She works at a bar as most of the girls do which causes me some problems, the night we met was fine as it was her night off so we could party without her having to worry about being bar fined. For the uniniated the barfine is a standard practice over here, the girls work at a bar typically from 7pm and knock off when it closes which is normally 2-3am. If they wish to leave the bar during that working period then they or someone else must pay a barfine which is 500baht which then excuses the girls from work. This way the bar gets compensated for the girls being taken away, this barfine doesn't mean you're entitled to sleep with the girl it just means she's free for the night and most likely will accompany you. Now see this is where it gets annoying as I wanna hang out with <insert name here> but must pay her bar if I wish to do, I could wait until she finishes at 3am but by then I'm hammered haha. We could also just hang out at her bar but every drink for a girl you must buy and they're like triple the price.

I payed her barfine last night as we wanted to see the fireworks which were awesome and probably went longer than the yearly Australia Day one's. We were joined by one of her friends who is <drooling emoticon here> but crazy as all hell and has a running barfine from some guy who picks her from time to time but other then that she's free to do what she wants. When I say crazy I'm not kidding, I went into the clubs toilet last night and when I came out of the cubicle she was standing there demanding to see my package...haha what the hell!. I dunno if paying a girls barfine could be seen as prostitution but it's in the same ballpark and doesn't sit right with me but that's the system!

Due to being away for 3 months my budget is pretty limited so I can't afford to keep hitting the bars everynight so don't plan on barfining her tonight and will have a quiet one. I should probably get out of Pattaya mid week as a town full of booze and girls who tell everyone that they're a "handsum man" is a budget buster. I'm going to look into a Vietanm Visa tomorrow and need to find a bloody charger for my phone so anyone who's smsed me I apologise for not replying (haha Travis called me in HK and quickly hung up when he realised I was overseas and it was going to cost him a fortune).

I better go as my ipods all charged up and I need some food, feel free to leave any comments.

Regards,

Handsum Man

I've often said/bragged that hangovers don't occur on holiday and listed many possible reasons for this including humidity,no work to worry about and Aussies having the drinking capacity of a tardis. Last night I unintentionally tested my "no hangovers on holiday" theory and I'm sad to say it joins "white boys can dance" and "senior citizens are wild in bed" as utter bullshit.It's just hit 5:30pm and I think I've been out of bed for about an hour which isn't how I had envisioned spending my last full day in Hong Kong. It's well known that I have the kidneys of a smurf and often suffer large hangovers that last so long that I develop bedsores but this is the first big one I've experienced on holidays and it won't be something that I'll be repeating.

I'll attempt to sift through the disjointed memories of last night and fill you in on what happened as it was actually a pretty good night. The plan was to hook up with the Welsh girl for a beer or two but then I found out she doesn't land until the 30th which is the day I fly out so that wasn't going to work. Instead I hit the American Embassy (McDonalds) for a snack and as usual there was no seating to be found anywhere as it's always packed. There was one seat spare next to another gringo so I asked if I could sit there which he happily agreed to. We got to talking and he was from Paris but was moving to Australia so we chatted about that and he told me to check out the nightlife on Lockhart Road in Wan Chai so that's where I headed last night. The taxi trip took about 15 minutes and I found myself on Lockhart road which was less busy than crazy Nathan road and had plenty of clubs/pubs. I had a burger and 2 pints of Stella at a quiet german pub (german pubs are everywhere!) and sat at a bench overlooking the road so I could scope out the nightlife (Scope is codeword for perv). I noticed a pub over the road had a decent amount of people crammed inside so I finished up my pint and headed over to the "Old china Hand"

The place was indeed busy and was full of tourists/ex-pats and one of them invited me over to his table where he was sitting with another guy (names were shared but I can't recall them). They told me a quiz night was about to crank up and would I be interested in joining and having nothing better to do I agreed. The quiz night had 6 sections with 10 questions in each and from memory the sections were "General knowledge,Sci-Fi,Sport,Celebs,History and Movies". I was pretty useless but did alright in the movies and celebs sections. The quiz went for about 3 hours and we drank through-out and were joined by a few other ex-pats and there wives. I often find that ex-pats can be pretty bitter/cynical and tend to lecture you especially on travel but these guys did none of that and were good fun. The quiz concluded and I laughed when the "Perth Eagles" got announced as being the 3rd placed team and we won a bucket of beer (6)...woohoo. All the other guys in my group screwed there noses up at the brand of beer and they joked that 2nd prize was 3 beers and the winner only got cursed with a single beer. Now by this time I had drank 5-6 pints of beer and should have passed up the bucket of beer and gone home but it was free beer dammit. The rest of my group retired for the night and STUPIDLY I drank the rest of the beer and found myself VERY VERY drunk.

I recall wandering blindly around Wan Chai and stumbled across some Christmas display outside a business and it had these giant golden balls which I decided to pick up and carry about. It was quite large and heavy and my drunken mind thought it would make a great basketball so I bounced it on the concrete which made a very loud crash and the bottom of the ball caved in. Some guy ran up and grabbed the ball off me and started yabbering so I did what most responsible drunkards do and ran for my life. Pretty silly of me really and hopefully there's not a warrant out for me but it's convinced me to ease up on the boozing!

I can't even recall how I got home but did get propositioned in the elevator by a prostitute who showed me on a calculator how much it would cost to let her infect me with an STD but I didn't take her up on the offer. Today was just spent feeling nauseous and trying to ignore a pounding headache but I feel alright now despite some dizziness which I've had for a day or two. I'll head out tonight and take some photo's before flying out tomorrow at lunchtime. Not having a window in my room is annoying as I waltzed out in shorts and shirt to find it was pissing down with rain but I don't have a raincoat anyway so I guess it doesn't matter heh.

I have plenty more to rant about but I'll do that once I hit Thailand!

I've landed in Hong Kong and for a city with so much technology/neon it was actually damn hard to find a net cafe but I finally managed to track one down. The flight to Hong Kong from New Zealand was plain horrible and it wasn't just the 10.5 hour flight time. The person next to me had an inconsiderate baby who chose to cry the entire trip rather than look out the window and perv on the stewardesses like I did. Babies should be classed as hand luggage and thus have to be stowed away in an overhead compartment in my opinion. Thankfully my Ipod helped to drown out the babies screams and I kept a close eye on his face and when his face screwed up like he was about to take an epic dump I quickly hit the play button on the ipod. This was foiled on take-offs and landing when the flight crew requested I turn it off so it wouldn't interfere with the flight system. I guess it's understandable as there'd be some panic if the pilot radio'd ground control for permission to land and got Dennis Leary's "asshole" back as a response. The buttplug seated next to me tried to calm the baby down by employing the "baby talk approach which was more annoying than the actual crying so I got this;

"WAAAAAAA"

"ooo who's a cutey wooty baby waby"

• Crackling Intercom*

"This is your captain speaking, we'd like to kindly remind passengers that baby talk is a capital offence and anyone caught will be ejected"

Ok so the last bit didn't happen but it bloody should!

Accomodation was always going to be a bit dodgy in Hong Kong as there's quick a big gap here between budget accomodation and somethin' decent. I checked out some decent hotel and they blurted out "$200 a night" which made my wallet lapse into a coma so I headed towards the notorious Chunking Mansions. The touts quickly surrounded me and led me to a packed elevator where we took a slow ride upto the 13th floor. The room he showed me was like a cupboard as we went to go into the room to check it out a guy was actually leaving my room...what the hell?

The "cupboard" he showed me was downright horrible and I'm not the pickiest guy so I told him I'd get back to him if I ever needed a crack-den. I got into the elevator with 6 big scary black guys and while none of them screamed "Kill Whitey" it was still pretty uncomfortable. I moved onto Chunkings cousin which is the "Miridor Mansions" and a friendly chinese fella took me upto a room which while still hobbit-sized was much nicer and I agreed to his offer of 135HK which is about $25 (I think)

I felt pretty tired but decided to have a shower and hit the town but I wasn't anticipating the shower having no hot water. Being a tired smelly tourist I went ahead with the ice-shower and am confident that I came close to a heart attack. The shower and the toilet are actually in the same tiny room so if you chose to you could have a freezing shower while taking a dump...ingenious huh?

Nathan road where I'm staying is great at night as it's very busy and has more Neon than Vegas. I found some shady out of the way pub and took advantage of happy hour and knocked back a few expensive beers to prepare for my fave holiday activity "Wandering drunk around a foreign country". I finally stumbled into a nice little german pub and chatted with the two staff who were from Nepal and when I told them where I was from both went "ahhh Austria!"

I even tried swooning the hot female bartender by asking if I could have my beer in a baby bottle she was filling, heh think she thought I was serious!. Went to bed at around midnight and slept pretty well on the concrete matress but the aircon was really good and no hangover!

Without the lights on in my room it's totally pitch black so when I woke up I figured it was around 2am but checked my phone and it was 9:30am so slept later than I had thought. Spent most of the day wandering around on foot and checked out Kowloon Park and Mong Kok and the walking has made me realise how unfit I've become as my ankles are aching bigtime. I'm supposed to hook up with a welsh chick that I met from the forums for a beer tonight so should be good to have a drinking buddy. I get plenty of strange looks here as I could probably count on 2 hands the number of caucasians I saw today so a long frizzy haired (I washed it noooo) goatee sporting retard like me stands out a bit but everyone is very friendly. For example a friendly Indian chap stopped me today and said

"Hello young man"

"G'Day"

"Guess what today is?"

"Errr Tuesday?"

"It's your lucky day!"

"It is?"

"Yes *launches into some complex scam which I quickly caught onto and made some excuse about bowel movements and fled*

I hadn't walked more than 5 minutes when another Indian guy walked up and said;

"Hello!"

"G'Day"

"Guess what today is?"

"My lucky day right?"

• Dissapointed look*

No matter the country there's always scams going on but I find it amusing rather than annoying and always chuckle when touts try to sell me suits...I mean do I look lkike the sorta guy who gets around in a suit...tho a tophat and monacle might be a good look.

Well I've ranted enough and am sure this is booby-trapped with plenty of typo's and gibberish buit I'll update it tomorrow with some pictures. The guy next to me is chuckling into his webcam like a japanese school-girl, I'll leave before his "tee-hee's" become contagious.