Hometime

Long time between posts. I've been in vietnam. I've lost my phone and broke my kindle. I actually don't know how to go to sleep without them.

I went to the war remnants museum here in Saigon. It was pretty good. I took lots of photos then lost my phone so you won't get to see them. Nor will I. It was basically propaganda but not necessarily untrue. I learnt about the my lai massacre. It's worth a google. Probably the worst thing to happen in vietnam before I lost my phone.

Ho chi Minh city is pretty cool. It is way more relaxed than Bangkok, despite the culturally ingrained misuse of the horn. They beep to let everyone around them know they're going to continue going straight. Walking through the city there is always something happening. People everywhere playing various sports. I think I will move here.

I spent 5 days at the beach in Mui Ne. That's where I lost my phone. It was nice but windy. The wind gave some relief from the heat.

Now I am quickly writing what I think will be my penultimate blog post. It's come to an end. I'm about to go to the airport and fly back to Australia. Ill make up some meaningful bullshit for the last post. For this one though, I just want to thank people who gave me money in the gofundme. I shall endeavour to repay you when I get myself sorted out because I didn't even attempt your challenges. Except Mick's. I did that one 4 or 5 times.

Aunty Julie, Bev and anyone else who is reading this that can possibly get me work before Xmas, I can start next week.

Ayutthaya

Today I went to the Museum of Siam. I figured I should probably try to learn something about Thailand. It turns out Thailand's history, in summary, isn't that interesting. So I shall write about it.

First there were dinosaurs. Next there were big elephant looking things. Then there were the ancestors of humans. Finally there were people.

The people hunted and gathered. Then they planted rice and ran herds. Some of them fished. Then they started mining for copper, tin and gold.

They were nomadic. Then they lived in villages. Some became towns. Some towns became city states.

One big city state (Aya) didn't like the other (Ayutthaya) because the smaller cities in between would always run to Ayutthaya for help whenever they were attacked.

Aya attacked Ayutthaya (also called Siam by foreigners) but Ayutthaya repelled them in a 9 month long battle. So then then next boss of Aya attacked them again and this time he won. The Ayutthaya Kingdom was finished after 400 years or so.

Someone, although I don't know who, decided to build a replacement/replica of Ayutthaya and it is called Bangkok. Then they filled it with cars and made it a horrible place to walk around in. But that was much later.

In 1939 the boss man of whatever this place was called at that point decided to change the name of the country to Thailand. There are loads of different ethnic groups here but he decided Thais were the purest race, hence the name. If you weren't actually Thai, you just had to agree with the doctrine and then you were allowed to consider yourself Thai. Something similar happened around that time in Europe but it went in a whole other direction.

I played one of the interactive games at the museum. In it you were shown a map of South East Asia and could carve out a chunk of it for yourself. I sliced off a lovely piece with gold and forests and a nice deep port. Then I had to check on the villagers and they were dancing and having fun. But an English bloke walked into the village and gave them all hats and they started dancing differently. At that point the message: "Oh well, we'll just have to change our culture" flashed up on the screen and the game was over. There was nothing I could do. The hats were too powerful. I too have been a victim of the mighty English hat diplomacy. I support Spurs because a bloke gave me a Spurs hat.

I also watched this cartoon about the mythology behind the frog as a symbol of fertility (it's used to bring rain). It was a bit like a dream time story, crossed with the story of Noah's ark, crossed with Dragon Ball Z. I know it's boring but I'm writing it anyway.

There was once a King and Queen who had a baby, but unfortunately he was a toad. He was a nice guy but the ladies, despite their Facebook posts to the contrary, don't care for nice guys one bit. So he asked the gods to make him a looker and whoever the God was went "yeah alright" and he became a good looking bloke. Boom, he was married later that year.

He became King Toad and everyone loved him so much they stopped worshipping the gods. A great drought filled the land so King Toad asked his subjects to build a road to the sky, then he gathered up all the creatures on the earth into an army and went to fight the sky lord (he was responsible for the water situation). Oh, Toad could talk to the animals by the way.

Anyway, they both had access to magic so they flew around battling for a day but neither could win. Through the night Toad got the termites to eat all the wooden war machines and replaced the tail of the sky lords battle elephant with a serpent. While they were fighting the serpent snuck up and choked out the sky lord.

After, they had a conversation which pretty much went
Toad: Why you no send rain?
Sky Lord: Why you no worship me?
T: We'll worship. You send rain.
SL: Righto. But how will I know when you need it?
T: We'll shoot a dragon rocket into the sky to let you know.
SL: K

And somehow that is why a frog is used to bring rain...

IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!

But this is Thailand so that's ok.

Back to Bangkok

Ah, back on the night train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. We've just set off. I ended up staying in Pai for 7 nights. By far the longest time in one place since London. I've been really lax with updates.

As Matt mentioned in the comments, this is what everyone does. Someone said to me that they love how everything feels like an adventure in Thailand. I agreed but actually I feel the opposite. There are lots of adventurous things to do but they cost money, are organised for you and run a few times a day. They are fun though and I'm not complaining. I guess my point is, if Frodo went on a Contiki tour to Mordor it probably wouldn't have been as interesting of a story to tell. But I bet Frodo would still have a blast.

So, Pai. We named the motorcycle gang we formed 'Sons of Pailand'. Get it? It's like Sons of Anarchy but also has Thailand in it except what's that!? Thai is actually Pai! The plan was to go to halloween as a zombie biker gang. The plan succeeded for the others, but not for me. They looked amazing.

On the day of Halloween I went and visited Pai canyon, which was hugely disappointing. The only draw I can see is that there are places to get photos perched on the edge of a cliff. I have no interest in that so I just sat and watched a group of Chinese people see how close they could come to killing themselves in the name of getting 400 photos on 3 different cameras.

After that I went to a nearby waterfall with the kiwi couple. This one had a tall rock wall surrounding a deep pool at the base. It was different to the slide waterfall but I really liked it. You could climb up the edges and jump in but I am terrible at climbing.

I rushed back to my hostel to get ready for a Halloween party at Georgi's hostel. I don't know if Georgi should have an e on the end. Almost definitely but the Georgi I lived with in London didn't so too bad. Georgi is just like Elaine from Seinfeld. The party was fun but I had to go watch the rugby so I got Mike to drop me back at my hostel.

The guy with the password for the rugby stream was English and greatly enjoyed "forgetting" the password while we're all getting updates on our phones. I ended up running into town and 3 other blokes followed so we watched it at a pub full of kiwis and yanks that thought the world cup final was a good time to show off what they know about rugby - nothing, same as me.

We lost, so I had to run back to the hostel to complete my bet. The kiwi couple were gracious winners, like most of the kiwis. It was too late to head back out after that which is why I missed being a zombie biker.

The rest of my time in Pai has been spent doing a bit more site seeing, getting trapped at a cafe in the pouring rain, having creepy photos taken of me while I sleep by Dave, being creepy in the background of photos of Iris, watching ice hockey on the big screen at the Hostel and being eaten by mosquito's. I've been lucky not to get sick here yet. I've met many people who've been food poisoned, fallen off scooters and contracted undiagnosed fevers. Some had the trifecta.

Now I'm back in Bangkok with Toby. I was on a train at the start of this post so I hope that's not too confusing. I got bored half way through writing. I spent yesterday reading The Rosie Project. If you're ever wondering if you have aspergers read that book. It will convince you you don't. Unless you do.

We're going to wander down to get me a Vietnam visa.