As I lay on my knees, wrenching and gagging over the most filthy, festering and nauseating Thai night bus toilet I have ever seen - and I ever hope to see for that matter - I knew, to my horror, that I'd found the south-east Asian equivalent of Welsh's mythical lavatory. Everyone I've talked to has told me you can expect to get sick at least once if you're traveling in these realms and I've comfortably surpassed that milestone on my journey so far. The moral of the story? Don't eat suspicious looking 'soups' purchased from deep within Bangkok's hectic street markets. Earlier that day we'd flown out of suave Hanoi in north Vietnam down to Bangkok and from there caught a night bus to the south where we were to catch an ferry to the islands of Ko Samui, Ko Phangan and Ko Tao respectivly. We had a few hours to mill around in the capital so we headed into the markets for a bite of lunch. Oh Shesus. Bad call. My 'soup' had seven different types of 'meat'. There may have been pork and chicken involved but I swear that some of those gristly, heinous strips and balls that were floating surreptitiously in my bowl were from animals which I never EVER wanted to eat. Anyway, it all came up several hours later in my fated night bus toilet. Offensive much? For sure.
The thing about Thailand though, is that it owns. There's a reason why people talk about it more, visit it more and come back more than to Cambodia and Vietnam - or anywhere else in south-east Asia for that matter - it's cranking. Ye.
We've been up to A LOT since I last posted. Too much to chronicle in a logical order, so the narrative of this post will be non-linear, sporadic if you will. Right now we're on Ko Tao, the smallest, most isolated and easily the most charming of the three islands in south eastern Thailand, we've been to all three. Ko Samui, filled with Ibiza-esque night clubs and McDonalds attracts, for the most part, an older more heinous slash seedy demographic. The kids that are there have got it wrong, so wrong. Ko Phanang on the other hand, is famous for one thing and one thing only, Full Moon Parties. 20,000 people packed onto Had Rin beach for an ecstasy fuelled, fire breathing dance fest (oh yeah, the beach is plastered with chunder the next day too). Aptly summarised by a wise and well traveled friend of mine as "Courtney Place after the sevens on a beach". Ko Tao on the other hand, is a relatively well hidden gem. World renowned for it's bounteous coral reefs, it attracts divers, snorkelers, rock climbers, cliff jumpers and happy little clusters of on-to-it hippies who are seeking to escape the worn and battered paths of the other two islands. There's plenty of space to string up a hammock, chill on the beach or just sit around and chat to groups of young, like minded slicks. This was sunset tonight, a couple of hours ago:
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm ye. You can - and we have been - eating dinner on these supple little beach seats. On our second night here we all sat back and stared at the stars. As Nick Drake's Pink Moon wafted out over the beach I knew I'd reached some kind of bliss. Ko Tao is TINY (roughly covering the land from Mt Vic to Kelburn) yet it's still so isolated. The sun sets on the horizon too, unlike setting over 'the hill' in Wellington. 
A spot of late afternoon romance on the beach for my trusty companions.
I took this photo of my companions having a mid-afternoon dip from what has become our regular restaurant. The green and red curries are supremely tasty, pretty cranking chicken and tofu burgers too. Chur.
The night life here is sweet too. Not overly rampant or raucous, but still happening. Our trusty trifector was briefly expanded into a small fellowship when we met up with some buddies from Wellington - Claire, Esther, Hattie and Kim - whose travels through these realms coincided with ours. We had THE most cranking pool party on the evening of Claire's 21st. I don't have any photos, we never seem to have of the MOST cranking times. There was a pool (with lots of inflatables), a bar and a DJ. Need I say more? It was only us in the pool early on but after a few buckets, a few triple person piggy backs and several proud renditions of Happy Birthday the pool started going off. Then a fat pissed ugly Brit spewed in the pool. Nice one bro. Wait to wreck our supreme cranking party times. After ten minutes we all jumped back and raged it. lol. There were two little pre-teen European kids getting among the nastiness too. 'Novelty buzz' indeed.Every night the locals whip out their fire dancing skills. I must confess, they're quite skilled. Buzzy too. These kids just bust it out night after night. Sweet job. Weaving some kind of 21st century mystical Thai-sorcery every night on the beach every night and getting paid for it. Well supple. Potentially the most supple.
Very buzzy indeed. 
Ahhhhhhhhhh. What?
Theses slick should totally move to Wellington and bust out their skills on the waterfront or alongside the sweet live jazz outside Good Luck on the weekends. Defs got into taking pictures of these guys. This guy had a funny slash slightly disturbing look of titillation on his face as he swirled the flames around his head, almost as if he was seducing himself. 
Ok, I'm over 'night mode' on my camera now. Promise. Sue.
Whilst luxuriating by the beach front sipping Banana shakes and indulging in hour long back slash feet slash full body massages is all well and good, me and Ants decided it would be sweet to run to one of the highest 'peaks' of Ko Tao. I'd been up before, it was quite the episode. On our second night on the island I woke up hungover and, for some unknown reason, racked with guilt. Without thinking at ALL I put on my shorts and shoes and sprinted out the door, suddenly inspired to scale Ko Tao. Two hours later I regretted this decision. Immensely. The hill is steep, viciously steep. It was midday so the sun was at it's zenith and pumping 30 degrees onto my t-shirtless back. I didn't even have any water with me. 'twas a bad buzz. I was feeling ridiculously dehydrated and ready to faint, it's happened to me before, I randomly fainted in the Veeb studio a year ago. A swell German motor-biker spotted my forlorn (or perhaps slightly deranged) expression and gave me his bottle of water. Savior. the view from the top was spectacular. Hmmmmm it might have been a good call to bring my camera.
The next day me and Ants decided to head up, prepared this time. We had ample water and sunscreen. Ants was sporting his Beatles t-shirt and me a somewhat slick psychedelic sarong which I'd converted into a scarf. Well prepared indeed, just in case we ran into any stray indies along the isolated mountain road.
After a few hours we we're getting ridiculously hot and our dialog wandered down fresh avenues. To my bewilderment Ants developed a sudden, intense and passionate relationship with Fiordland. "Imagine drinking from the purest ice-cold spring in Fiordland", "Imagine standing in Fiorland and feeling the supple beads of cool rain pulsate off your body", "When we get back I'm going to order a Banana shake and the beads of Banana infused with the ice are go going to be more divine than the coolest stream in Fiordland" etc etc etc. We found this banana tree. It doesn't have anything to do with Foiordland, but still, it was chur. 
They LOOKED looked banana' s but tasted like heinous floury pygmy root sticks.
When we reached the top our delirious forest wanderings came to fruition."What would I want. Sky?"
When we got back we had the most divine Mozzarella and Pesto sandwiches They cost NZ $2. Chur.
Ko Tao is most certainly my pick of ALL the places we've journeyed to up to this point. Ko Phanang and Ko Samui are all rage rage... not really what we were looking for. There were some sweet hammock chill times listening to Dylan, Boards and Sigur Ros on Ko Phanang though. I had two nights sleeping on the beach there which was sublime. The stars (accompanied by some Wilco) would sooth me to sleep at night and the first thing I'd see in the morning was the sunrise over the ocean. All quite spiritual I must confess.
I met a particularly buzzy Italian man of about 30 on Phanang too. He was sitting out the front of his bungalo listening to some music with a beer and other such paraphernalia. He was all on his lonesome and looking supremely approachable for a spontaneous conversation. His grin was wide, well wide. Which was slightly unnerving as all he was doing was staring at a medium sized tree. He could hardly speak a word of English, but he seemed to have his nouns down, which he craftily utilized with perhaps his favorite English word, "good". I chilled out in a hammock near the front of his bungalo and our conversation went something like this: "Thailand... Good. Beach... Good. Italy... Good. New Zealand... Good. Coffee...Good. Beef... Good... Chilli sauce... Good. Lady Gaga... Good. Music.. Good." There was copious amounts of laughter wafting through the air too, he was a ridiculously funny guy. We were hardly communicating anything logical but oh shesus we were laughing hard. The climax of his theatrics was when he stood up on his mini-balcony and started to imitate soaping his body in a dancing motion whilst staring DIRECTLY at me, retaining his manic laugh as he went. I couldn't stop laughing. A small dog began licking some chili sauce off my foot that I'd spilt in the midst of my laughter. I became thoroughly confused. After much deliberation and several minutes of deep, calming breathing I was able to deduce that he was referring to Thai new year. Apparently there is a three day period where everyone on the street gives everyone else showers for free with buckets of soapy water and sponges (only in the north apparently) . Three days of festive street showering. You can't go anywhere without getting a shower from a random on the street. Sweet! My newly found Italian friend certainly explained it to me with much enthusiasm, apparently he just roamed the streets for three days in nothing but his togs. Getting clean ow.
What my Italian friend did manage to communicate to me clearly however, was that he was having a dam sweet time. We met a Danish guy in Hanoi (drinking 'bier hoi'. The cheepest beer in the world, literally. NZ 50c for a glass) who ended EVERY sentence with "and it was so nice". He was on the same buzz. It's a buzz that we're most certainly riding.
Talk you soon.
- Timoth Jamuel Parin
Cranking the Mekong river scene.
We got off our boat in a little river town called Chow Dok and jumped on a 'bus' to Saigon. Easily the worst bus ride of my life. We were packed into this little mimi-van, all twenty of us (there were about fifteen seats) and proceeded across the bumpiest, semi-paved 'road' to Vietnam's largest city. The driver kept stopping to pick up people along the way to score himself a fw extra dollars. When we finally arrived at around one in the morning we jumped on the back of three motorbikes to take us to our guesthouse. My driver was a sack however and quickly lost Ants and Andrew on the hectic streats (Saigon's streets are bustling with roughly four million motorbikes). He could only speak a few words of English and was blessed with even less initiative - and seemed to have absolutely no idea where we were going - so instead of finding my trusty companions he just crused the streets of Saigon whilst I clung helplessly to his undernourished and slighly sweaty torso. I took a picture of this buzzy hobo man making a fire on the side of the street though so no worries. 
Then I began to get frustrated and bored and started taking pictures of my lost self. 
We fortuitously stumbled across one of his 'buddies' who took us to the guest house. I got to assess the night life from a position of relative comfort, so thinking about it now it was kind of sweet. Addidas. Hmmm, I took copious amonts of photos trying to capture the chaos - and believe me, it's chaos on a grand scale - of the streets. Motorbikes are slicking it around everywhere. The interesections are a trip. 
These tunnels streched all across the Cu Chi region to Saigon river. The Viet Kong and their posse would crawl from up to five kilometers at a time to evade American's, ambush American's, hide near American camps and listen to their music and genererally snoop around. Ridiculous. They were fighting for their homeland though, fair enough. They made some pretty mean traps for the American's too, all concealed slyly under foliage. Bad buzz if you got caught in this one. It'd probably take about a day to bleed to death after being empaled by these crude spikes. Chur.
We decided to take Lonely Planet's advice and "get out of the congested urban areas and explore the rural areas to discover Vietnam's natural beauty". Instead of heading to Nha Trang, the most obvious coastal destination twelve hours out of Saigon, we took a bus to beautiful Mui Ne, a relatively isolated fishing village seven hours south of Nha Trang. A slick Danish guy called August (he was pretty much the Scandenavian version of swiss Sam in terms of his demeanor, mannerisms and appearance) who I met in Cambodia couldn't say enough about it. I can see why. After over a week of hectic travelling and 6am starts we needed some of this.
Me and Ants headed out for a run accompanied by a serene sunset along the beach front. It was all very merry untill we got chased by this spastic mongrel sea dog, freaky as. I was sketching so bad when it was chasing us that I fell into a little river. But we evaded that mongrel and manged to get back for some more hard earned chilling.
After a few days of chilliaxing it was time to get out to Mui Ne's famous sand dunes, we jumped on some motorbikes (they cost around $8 to rent for a day, you don't need s liscence or anything, we didn't even know how to drive them, it's pretty simple). 
The dunes were pretty sweet too. Ahhhhhhh it was SO hot on the sand. Supple viewa. 
We paid some local kids a few dollars and they hooked us up with a piece of plastic to slick it down the dunes, as well as taking us to the premium spots. It takes about eight seconds to get down. 
See that little guy in goal, he was the an. He made countless saves, and he must ony be five or six (most of the kids were eleven or twelve). Ahhhh sweet suppleneess. They got uber-excited on the second night when we came back to play again, there was even a little crowd of locals watching, probably just to check out the white boy novelty factor. 
We played untill the sun went down, then got a team photo. Chur. Oh man, look how sweaty we are! Playing beach football with these kids was the high point of the entire trip for me personally. 
