Our flight was aboard a Dash 7, operated by Berjaya Air, flying from Koh Samui Airport to Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport. It wasn’t as dodgy as it sounds, and we arrived safely in Kuala Lumpur and after painless immigration and customs formalities we were in two taxis to down town Kuala Lumpur.

I’d booked a few rooms at the Classic Inn, and was pleasantly surprised. It’s a very clean, friendly, well priced, and well located place. That night we had a curry from nearby, watched the end of the Singapore Formula 1 race, and got to bed quite late.

The morning brought a catastrophe: I was sick. Really, really, really sick. Think running to the bathroom every five minutes sick. So sick that I stayed in bed for three days feeling miserable. I’m not sure what caused it. We’d all eaten the same food at Koh Samui airport, the same curry in KL, and the same samosas that morning on Koh Tao. The only thing I did differently was drink a glass of lemon juice in the departure lounge. Anyway, everyone else met up with Kelvin and Abu and much merriment was had. Our Irish friend Brian even joined us after a day or two.

Kuala Lumpur is a bit of a blur, but after a few days I’d recovered and was ravenous. I found my way to KLCC, and to a food court contained within, and then found myself ordering two serves of nasi lemak in near perfect Malaysian. I’m more than just a pretty face!

Kelvin took us to the Batu Caves, and wisely waited down the bottom smoking cigarettes whilst we trudged to the top, dodging evil monkeys and runaway children charging down the stairs. It was hot, but well worthwhile. It’s a very spectacular place.

Finally, we were due to depart Kuala Lumpur and travel to Singapore by bus. We could have flown, but it costs the same and takes the same amount of time and is far less convenient. So, we booked a five hour passage with Transtar and left early in the morning. It was a nice bus – Wifi on board, computer games, TV, reclining seats, and so on. We even had a somewhat edible food service!

We’ve all quickly taken to our various dive courses, spending the days learning and diving and talking and eating and enjoying the beautiful scenery, both above and below the surface. Nights have been spent at a variety of beach bars and restaurants, with an eclectic group of people of all ages, backgrounds, and origins. It’s a lot of fun. The big group of us doesn’t scare people away, and in fact it seems to attract a lot of people traveling by themselves.

Yesterday was the final day of my SSI Advanced Adventurer course. I can now dive to 30m, at night, and use a dive computer to help me plan the dive… it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a lot of fun and well worth the effort. We haven’t seen a whale shark, which isn’t so awesome, but I have swum with barracudas and giant groupers and a myriad of other sea dwelling creatures. It’s strange how much I like diving: I hate the beach, I’m not a fan of swimming in the ocean, and the sand shits me to tears. Somehow, this is different.

Last night we celebrated our various levels of qualification certification with a few drinks… this got a little messy and I suspect there were a few sore heads around today!

After emerging from three hours of sleep on Friday night, we left our hostel for the bus to Chumporn and the ferry from Chumporn to Koh Tao. The bus was intolerably hot and I wasn’t sure if I was dying or falling asleep. The air conditioner had broken and even the Thai dudes on the bus were hating life nearly as much as we were. It was six hours of absolute misery, and disembarking from the bus to the sweltering heat of a Thai noon was a welcome relief from the glasshouse.

We met a few cool people on the fery and we’ve been hanging out ever since, along with a few cool people spread between the various dive courses and refresher courses we’re doing. Our group of eight has swollen to a group of between five and fifteen. Last night we spent the evening eating on the beach, watching fireworks and getting to know our new German, Canadian, Dutch, American, English, and Kiwi friends. Good times… though better for others. Filer and Mark showed up at the hotel at 4am. I was home by 1, and up at 8… those guys haven’t emerged. Yet.

It’s hot. Really hot. The weather has been perfect: warm sunny days, and slightly cooler evenings with a nice breeze and thunderstorms on the horizon. Evenings are beer and food filled, with tales of the day spent diving. It’s awesome. Photos to come when I can be bothered… life here is all about maximum relax, minimum stress. Life is good.

We’re all here, having met over the past few days. It’s hot, humid, and crazy. We’re just far enough from the tourist ghetto to be relatively quiet and close enough to be convenient.

I don’t have any photos yet… Bangkok is merely a meeting poin for the rest of the adventure.

We leave for Koh Tao at 6am tomorrow… ouch!

Needless to say, the two hours between Koh Phangan and Koh Tao passed quickly. We decided to go with Om to the dive resort she worked for, because a) she was cool, b) it had a shiny new ute with rain protection to take us there, c) it was raining, and d) we knew the place by name and it had a good reputation.

Because I only had a short time on Koh Tao before heading to Singapore to watch the Singapore Open golf tournament, I was thrown right in the deep end: I was to start my open water course that evening. My group was a little large but that wasn’t a problem, and everyone was fairly cool. Most of them were Irish – there was only one other guy in the group of 9 and he was an English guy married to an Irish girl! The dive instructor was a former English primary school teacher who went to Thailand for three weeks, decided she liked it, and has been there for two years working as a dive instructor. We had a trainee dive master with us – also English and a radio DJ, who also went to Thailand for a few weeks one year ago.

The next four days passed in a blur of cheap beer, delicious food, rain, diving, rain, diving, rain, rain, rain, diving, and has the distinction of being one of the most memorably fun times I’ve ever had in my life. There’s something about sitting six meters from the water on a beach with cheap cold beer watching people twirl fire sticks, whilst with a group of twenty people with various colour skin, various accents, and various spoken languages, that makes for an incredibly enjoyable time. Sure, it’s not a particularly authentic travel experience when one realises that there’s nothing on Koh Tao that isn’t for tourists or for the people who support the tourist industry – that is, there’s no real Koh Tao. It’s a place for people to dive.

During the dive course I started to feel worse and worse, and I was actually glad when it was over. My whole body ached and I guess the cold came back to bite me. However, I am now qualified to dive! The course was completely awesome and I really can’t wait to get back…

The day after an enormous night out, including dinner at a fairly decent restaurant, to celebrate certification, I was due to leave Koh Tao for Koh Samui. The night was one of the wettest they had had for some time, and in the morning several long tail boats along the beach had flooded to such an extent that they had sunk. Whilst waiting for my ferry I watched locals trying to un-sink the boats, with varying degrees of success.

I arrived on Koh Samui late, stayed in another dodgy hotel, and awoke at about 4am to head to the airport. I was due in Singapore that night, via Bangkok.

Flying from Bangkok to Koh Samui is an interesting experience. Bangkok Airways rate themselves as “Asia’s boutique airline” and they certainly are. Every ticket holder gets access to the Bangkok Airways lounge, with free wireless, food, drink, magazines, and so on. It’s like the Qantas Club, but for everyone. The short flight to Koh Samui shows off coastline and ocean, before several small islands appear. Then an enormous island appears, and the plane lands: welcome to Koh Samui. Bangkok Airways built the airport themselves, and it’s an intriguing place: open sides, luxurious, and compact.

I jumped aboard a minibus taking people to various hotels and decided to stay at some place that looked interesting. The driveway was enormous… lined with shops, and very new and modern. The hotel was interesting… I was fairly sure I was the only person staying there. It was very new and decked out in colonial style four star goodness, but was absolutely deserted.

After a wander to the beach area I quickly decided that I hated Koh Samui. It was full of stupid white tourists, overpriced crap for the stupid white tourists to buy, and underpriced Thai women for stupid white tourists to enjoy. The streets were lined with girlie bars and sports bars and massage places and cheap and nasty looking food places and 711′s and all sorts of other junk. It rained a lot. It wasn’t nice. I went to bed early, only to be women up throughout the night by lots of strange noises in the hotel… and then the power went out. Turns out there was so much rain that several rooms were flooded.

Koh Samui just pissed me off. I had to get out, but to where? I had a vague plan of meeting up with the English guy from the rafting trip on Koh Phangan for a full moon party, but I couldn’t get in touch with him. I figured I’d go there anyway.

The following morning the hotel driver took me to a boat dock on the other side of the island, where I waited for a ferry. While I was waiting I started talking to two guys who were travelling together – A Belgian guy who had been living in Australia, and an American guy who had been all over the place. They convinced me to go to Koh Tao to go diving with them… so I did.

A quick talk to the ferry ticket sales guy, and I had my ticket changed to Koh Tao. I knew nothing of the place, and I’m not a huge fan of the ocean.

The route took us along the Middle Pai River, in to the depths of the jungle. The scenery was spectacular… similar to northern Australia in some ways, but very Thai at the same time. The rapids were enjoyable: the most difficult we saw were class 4, which was fun but not all that challenging. We stopped for lunch, and at one point we had to disembark the raft and walk through a mining camp. The guys there were used to stupid white people wandering about, and were full of questions. While we chatted to the miners, the guides navigated the raft to beyond the river ford and to a safe launching spot. There was a lot of debris in the river – thousands of tree limbs and other bits and pieces, but happily there was little man made stuff.

The overnight camp was again in the middle of the jungle and had been established by the French owner of the rafting company some fifteen years previously. A crew of 4 Thai dudes lived there on a rotational basis. They were to cook, clean, and maintain the place. One enterprising young guy had taken to selling warm beer to visitors: 100 baht per can. I think our bill came to about 2500 baht that night, including many beers bought for the Thai guys. There was no electricity and everything there had to be floated in by river, as there was no road access anywhere nearby. After a delicious meal we played lots of card games and told stories, played guitar (how that survived the raft trip I don’t know) and eventually went to bed: a bamboo sleeping platform for each person, with several layers of mosquito nets and some sleeping bags for mattresses. I used my silk inner as a sleeping bag and slept quite happily in the middle of the jungle.

The following day we rafted through some milder rapids for four hours, saw a bunch of fishermen on their bamboo rafts, and ended up in Mae Hong Son. The French guys and I decided to stay at the same bungalows, and spent the evening wandering about the night market eating delicious food and drinking cold beer. Mae Hong Son is a very interesting place. It’s near the Burmese border, and there are a lot of shifty looking white guys with lots of dark clothing and equipment wandering about and doing strange things at night with motorbikes and cars. Make of that what you will. However, the town is very beautiful and is well worth spending a couple of days in.

Two days later we left on a Thai Airways flight to Chiang Mai. The flight was spectacular – we had an evening view of some fairly impressive mountains, jungle, and farmland. It’s well worth doing, event hough it costs significantly more than the 10 hour mountainous bus ride!

In Chiang Mai the French guys and I split up: I was headed for some hostel the Lonely Planet guide had suggested was good, but in reality it was pretty average. It was the type of place that had a sign stating their hourly rates… but other than that it was OK. A little dirty, a little noisy, but well located. The atmosphere was miserable and I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

The following morning, I left for Koh Samui.

Anyway, I’m not on Ko Tao, and I’ve started an SSI open water diving course. It’s a nice place, but it’s raining a lot. I guess that’s why it’s the low season.

However, wireless is intermittent and I have a class (??!) to go to soon – the first dive is later today – so don’t expect any major updates or photos until I get to Singapore on November 12.

Bangkok was crazy. The hostel was great, and the people were nice, but I guess any city with a lot of tourists in South East Asia suffers from the trying-to-sell-shit-to-everyone syndrome. At least they’re nice about it in Bangkok. They smile, even though they might not take no for an answer.

Bangkok is big, dirty, modern, ancient, clean, big, intriguing, friendly, and spectacular. It also appears to be home half of all worldwide tourists at any one time. Traffic is more chaotic than anywhere else I’ve been so far. Giving way is at best a nice thought, and at worst a deadly reliance – particularly for the millions of motorbikes.

A French guy, and English guy, and myself met one evening over a few beers and decided to investigate the area. Close to the once infamous and now somewhat gentrified Patpong district, we braved the crowds of tourists and the crowded street markets, and the only thing that told us we were in the red light district was the number of guys offering us cheap girls. No, thanks. Cheap girls are the last kind of girl I want. I even went so far as to invent a girlfriend – it’s amazing how a “no, no… my girlfriend” and a finger running across the throat shuts them up, or makes them laugh… but it’s also disturbing how often it only encourages them.

The following day we managed to navigate our way to a canal boat pier using the Sky Train, and enjoyed a uniquely Bangkok experience. Disembarking, a very friendly Thai guy who wasn’t trying to sell us anything at all (yeah, right) asked if we needed directions. Sure. We knew what was happening – he would draw on a map, say some stuff, call over a tuk-tuk driver, "negotiate" a price, and ask for nothing in return. Sure enough, we soon found ourselves on a thirty baht for four hour type deal. It’s really not that bad. We went to some temples, and also went to a tailor (no pressure to buy anything, just look at stuff) and a gem shop (again no pressure to buy, just look at overpriced pieces of glass and aluminium masquerading as gemstones and silver) and the idiotic white guys buying stuff.

Eventually we ended up at a temple near the royal palace. The tuk-tuk driver said he’d wait "over there" for an hour for us. Sure. See you then. As soon as we entered the grounds of the temple, we knew something was up. There was security everywhere, Thai people hanging out waiting for something, and lots of people in uniform. We wandered around, and eventually the two others left (they couldn’t find the tuk tuk driver) but I decided to hang around to see what was going on. Not five minutes after the other guys had left, the nearby roads were closed and a marching band and a bunch of parading soldiers showed up. Intriged (and stuck – I wasn’t allowed ot, and there were no taxi’s around on the closed roads anyway), I hung around and eventually, after a brief rain shower, a prince and princess appeared. The did their thing in the temple, and left – shortly before the rain started again.

Two hours later, the rain stopped and myself and all the other Thai guys emerged from shelter. The tuk-tuk driver had disappeared. The scammer… became the scammed.

The following day we split up. I was heading to Chiang Mai, a large northern city. It’s nice. It’s a huge change from Bangkok.  It’s relaxed and clean and pleasant in the old city, there was no rain, and it was slightly cooler. The place I stayed in was a bit average. Nice rooms, good food – but despite being full of people, not very social. I ended up doing an ATV tour by myself (which was actually pretty cool, just the guide and I) and we rode through forest and jungle and mountains to villages, lookouts, and waterfalls. It was nice.

After a few days in Chiang Mai I’d had enough, and left for a place called Pai. It’s part of the old hippie trail. Tehran, Kabul, Goa, Pai. It’s still a bit of a hippie hangout. It’s a small town, tucked away four hours in to the mountains from Chiang Mai along what would have to be one of the greatest driving roads I’ve ever seen. If you can deal with the occasional bumps, slow traffic, and livestock… it’s 120km of spectacular scenery with switch backs, sharp corners, long straights, and few interruptions. It’s not much fun being stuck in a (nice) minivan, though.

There’s a lot of stuff to do in Pai. It’s possible to rent a bike or motorbike, to trek, raft, cook, drink, eat, visit temples, and do any number of other hippie activities. I rented a bike but immediately was monsooned upon, so my bike rental adventure was short lived. I got a nice view at the end of the ride but discovered I’d left my camera battery in the charger. Whoops.

Being a slightly alternative town, there’s a big focus on healthy living. Most restaurants are so called organic, and there’s more fruit juice and shake shops than in all of Australia. There’s Italian food, Indian, French, Thai, Chinese, Burmese, bugers, street stalls, restaurants, bakeries, markets, and loads of bars with live music. There’s hippie clothing shops, tour offices, normal clothing shops, big hotels, small riverside bungalows, and the usual guest houses. It’s full of Thai people, white guys, Japanese, old, young, short term and long term. A lot of people seem to have been here forever. It’s a nice place, and very laid back. With better transportation I think I’d spend a little longer here, but after seeing the number of people bandaged and in splits, I decided against renting a motorbike.

I did, however, decide to undertake a two day white water rafting journey to Mae Hong Son. I leave tomorrow morning, and arrive on Tuesday in the afternoon. From there I’ll fly to Chiang Mai, and then from Chiang Mai to some island down south – probably to dive, perhaps to party. On the 12th I fly from Koh Samui (not where I’m staying) to Bangkok, and from Bangkok to Singapore.

After Singapore, I’ll spend a few weeks in Laos before heading back home early. I should be home before Christmas and in time for my cousin’s wedding. I’ll basically be home a month earlier than expected, but that’s fine by me. I can’t get rid of this cold, and I feel as though I’m just spending money to be sick in exotic places.