Between the last post and this was Cambodia, which was awesome, and Laos, which was awesome too, and the trip from northern Thailand back to Bangkok but I can't really be arsed to do all that because it was ages ago. But for the highlights:

Angkor Wat - Sell your kidneys and go. It's fucking ace. Siem Reap is a shit hot town too.

Luang Prabang - "A tonic for the soul" they say. A four day town with pretentious French twats everywhere I say. Thank fuck we met some very cool people on our Mahout course, and they told us about the good bars away from the main strip. Also nearly sinking into the Mekong when our ferry engine failed was fun.

Pai - Hippy town. Quite cool. Lots of joss sticks and hemp clothing. Not as good as it thinks it is.

Chiang Mai - We all know how rad this place is.

Sukhothai - Shit. Not worth visiting even for one second.

Ko Samet - Lovely beaches. Expensive.

Bangkok - You know the script here.

And so to Perth. We made landfall at Perth airport at around 2am on Sunday 15th Feb, thus commencing The Longest Sunday Ever. We stayed up chatting with family until around 5am, then I got up at 11am and was confused to find out it was still the same day. Three day weekend without the extra day. Bizarre. However, I got right back into the Aussie swing of things by consuming my own body weight in Carlton Draught that evening. Super. It's made from beer you know.

I love Perth. Yeah it's a small town. Yeah, you go round the same streets all the time. But I find it's got a laid back charm about it that means you relax there. Plus it's a piece of piss to get around and everything you'd want to do or visit it handily close and well served by public transport. Of course, we left Perth after two days and went South to Margaret River to sample wines and watch tattooed idiots be ejected from pubs. And Gill ate a Witchiti grub, or however you spell it. Brave lass.

And so to Melbourne.

Where Perth is a compact village-feel city, Melbourne is a vast sprawling metropolis with a lot more going on. So much so in fact, that it's quite bewildering to get to grips with. We've been here for around two weeks now, and frankly I've still got no idea what's going on.

The thing that has struck me most about Australia vs UK so far, is how much the same but how far removed they are from one another. And mostly this has to do with the language. Setting aside upspeak and the accent, as they're a given, the different names for things are nuts....

Fancy a pint? You need a schooner.

Looking for a duvet? That'll be a doona then.

After bed linen? Ah, you want some manchester.

Mother just died? No worries, she'll be apples.

See? Fucking bizarre. But I am after all a stranger in a strange land, so I need to get to grips with this. As I do with AFL, or Aussie Rules Football to us Uk-ers. As far as I can tell, this is a mass riot masquerading as a sport where one punches or punts the ball - said ball being something akin to a downsized rugby ball - and attempts to punch and punt to opposition into submission in the process. And I'm told it's a much calmer game that once it was. This statement alone I feel is reminiscent of my being told that Thai boxing is not the sport it once was, as they no longer use hessian ropes arm wraps impregnated with ground glass.

Clearly, the era of the hard man is, alas, past.

Melbourne also has real weather, much of which has been in evidence since our arrival. You will no doubt be aware of the terrible bush fires they've had outlying the city, and the near 50C temperatures leading up to that. Well, I can now tell you we had two inches of rainfall in a day over the weekend and it barely broke 10C. All the locals are thrilled we brought Manchester weather with us.

And yet ginger me still manages to burn.

....tomorrow.

11 hours packed into a little minibus.

FUCKING GREAT.

So we left Bangkok a while ago now. I forget how long to be honest.

First stop on our way south was a little place called Trat, or Trad depending on how you want to spell it. Noone else seems to give a toss, so I don't see why I should. Anyway, towards the end of our time in Bangkok, we elected to get to the bus station and buy tickets to get us down there. So the guide book says most buses going east go from, funnily enough, the Eastern Bus Terminal.

Of course, we don't like to make things easy, and on the promise that it takes less time to get to Trat from the Northern Bus Terminal, we head up there. I should point out that things in Thailand are not necessarily promoted or pointed out handily for the tourist as they might be in, say, London. For example, there are NO FUCKING SIGNS AT ALL for the Northern Bus Terminal if you decide to use public transport to get there. Which we did. And then spent an albeit fairly pleasant hour walking the wrong way through a nice park to try and get there. Ah well.

Some time later we found our way to the bus station and bought tickets. At last. We then of course determined to sod public transport and get a taxi there the day after. Easy.

And so to Trat, on a 1st class air con bus. Which is just a big coach full of noise, but with some legroom and not so oppressive heat. The air con is essential in cooling your fear from the driving of the clearly amphetamine fuelled maniac at the wheel. But we got there in one piece eventually.

Trat doesn't seem to be on the traveller trail really. It's acknowledged as the place you get the ferry to Ko Chang, not somewhere to stop over. But stop over we did, and it was worth it just for a look around, but there's not much there. A few nice cafes, Cool Corner Cafe chief amongst these, and a few temples to go and bother; we hired bikes and scooted a couple of km out of town to one.

After two relatively sleepless nights in our guest house, thanks mainly to our staying in an oven which appeared to be bordered by Trats one and only political rally and rock festival venue, our first stop was the post office, to send on all the extraneous crap that everyone told us not to pack, but we did.

Rob - please tell Kate that Gill did not of course need her Uggs and they've been sent to Oz. Funny that eh?

Bags suitably lightened, we practically skipped into a songthaew, and on to the ferry to Ko Chang. We've been on Ko Chang for 7 nights now, and have got another 4 to go. It's lovely, white beaches, hot sun, warm sea, the lot. A nice holiday within our holiday, and feeling suitably relaxed, we're now planning our assault on Cambodia, and are next heading to Siem Reap to go and mither more ruins at Angkor Wat.

On a final note, here on the beach at Kai Bae, the sunset is saluted every night by an aging disabled German/Swiss gent in a wheel chair using a full size Alpen horn. MINT.

Surely a contender for most manic city on the planet, we shipped up and rocked out of Bangkok inside of a week, but man that's more than enough time there for me.

Bangkok seems to be a city that people either love or hate, with it's filth, grime, constant market hawkers, tuktuk driver headcases and piles of western chaps with thai girls in tow. Personally, I love it. But I can't stand it for long.

We stayed in the Bel-Aire Princess hotel, a surprisingly luxurious 3*+ gaff just off Thanon Sukhumvit. An excellent location to be sure, right in the heart of some of the great bars and restaurants that line one of the longest roads in Thailand - it runs all the way to Cambodia; in fact I'm still on it right now, some 300km east in Trat.... - near to the Skytrain and handy for the night markets on the main road. I could recommend the place highly, and for 45 Green Queens a night a good solid luxury bargain by Thai price standards.

We handily found ourselves in Bangkok for New Year too, which was nice. Off to Vientiane Kitchen we buggered, an Issan (NE Thailand) restaurant which was having a gala dinner at a fairly hefty 2000B (about 40 quid) each. All food and all drink free, plus loads of entertainment. Just the 3 lady boys though.

And lo, we did eat and drink ourselves stupid.

And we won two of the big prizes in the raffle. A free meal to the value of 2000B, which we kicked the arse out of on our last night in Bangkok, and 2 nights at a spa hotel in Phuket. Not bad for a nights work. There weren't many punters left by the time the raffle was drawn, and so the staff kept asking us our numbers and basically rigging the draw so we eventually won the good stuff. Then they asked us to stay on at their staff party and mash it up with them.

On the way home, we saw fire engines blasting down the road to what we later discovered to be the nightclub fire which claimed a reported 59 lives. A terrible start to 2009 for Bangkok, but perhaps a little selfishly, at least we're ok.

.....I will be getting on a plane with THE WIFE^TM to start the journey to Australia.

Good lord.

so we are now two weeks and counting until the day we fly off to start our new life in australia.

i'm not worried about it at all. just flapping like hell that we'll get everything done, make sure the shippers pick everything up that we're taking and it all gets there in one piece.

the major thing we're taking is THE WIFE^TMs car. for those of you who don't know, she has one of these:



and if you don't know what that is, it's a mazda rx8. it's fucking lovely, and we're taking it with us because a) it wouldn't sell here, and; b) it's worth a bucketload of cash in Oz.

now i drive it very little, having my own car which work kindly provide. however on friday night just gone, i drove TW up to her works xmas do, and promised to return to pick her up at gone midnight. on the way up there, the fuel was getting low - any rx8 owners reading this will know this is a perennial problem with them - so i thought i'd do her a favour and chuck a few quid in the tank. which i duly did.

then i noticed the screenwash was low, and looking in the rear view mirror, noted that the water line was behind me, so i slowly reversed across the forecourt to fill up.

and backed the fucker into a skip.

i mangled the bootlid, scraped the back bumper, and generally felt my heart sink as the bastard thing is due to be picked up on wednesday to go to Oz.

fortunately, as it turns out, TWs work have a fleet repair place opposite, so it's in there now having a new boot lid and getting the bumper sprayed. we should have it back on wednesday.....

apart from that though, everything is pretty peachy.

Longer term readers of this shite may remember my previous efforts to get fitter and/or drop weight, mostly thwarted by injury of one form or another.

Eventually, I rolled over and gave in and engaged the services of Mick. Mick is a personal trainer. THE WIFE ^TM started up with him at her gym, and I thought I'd give it a bash too, since I was going backwards fast. And so, I started training with Mick but not being a member of a gym - I hate them and their smug lycra clad inhabitants - he suggested we train outdoors in the park. Super!

I should explain a little further that Mick is also an ex-Royal Marine Commando. For those of you not aware of what that means, this makes him harder than a coffin nail and rather motivated.

So the last 12 weeks or so have been spent with weekly Mick sessions, plus 3-4 sessions p/w of my own on weights and aerobic exercise routines we've developed together.

And to date I've dropped just over a stone in weight, and bulked up quite a bit of upper body muscle.

So far so good.....

my sinuses are full of hate.

i am back in the band.

for one night only i'll admit, but i'm back in the chair for now at least.

turns out the new drummer they got, whilst cetainly an accomplished player, turned out to be a bone idle cunt who couldn't get his shit together for rehearsals and wanted money off everyone for some electronic doohickey he'd built to "make the vocals sound good".

so i'm playing the next gig at some private party in manchester, and at our first rehearsal in some 8 weeks or so on wednesday night, we sounded pretty good considering! it's just like riding a bike.

only with cymbals.

with so much having been occuring, i have had precious little time to update this dusty corner of the internet. doubtless most of you who bother to look in here from time to time will know that we are leaving for australia at the end of the year.

will we come back?

who knows.

one thing's for sure, the bits of organising it i thought would be a pain in the arse were dead easy, and the bits i thought would be easy are proving to be a pain in the arse.

we have our visas now, which was entirely painless. the company i'm moving to took care of all of it, though going for the chest x-rays as part of the medical was oddly disturbing. it's strange, although you know - or are confident - that there's buggerall wrong with you, you still can't help but think "what if they tell me i'm dying???!!!???". don't go looking for problems i always reckon, but we had little choice. still, it was easier for me than for THE WIFE^TM. they made her wear a big lead apron to protect her ladybits from radiation and what have you. the woman who gave her the pre-medical questioning was a stupid cow too.....anyway, all done now, and we're IN.

flights are now booked. i think we leave the UK on the 29th december, and head straight off to bangkok, where we are for 4 nights including new year, so that'll be cool. been before when we were on our honeymoon, but there's so much to check out there it's going to be great to go back. our plans after than for the remainder of jan and feb we'll have travelling aren't fixed, but we're heading down to trat and ko chang, before heading back north through cambodia to laos and then possibly back down through vietnam. we'll fly out of thailand towards the end of feb, onto perth for a few days before hitting melbourne end of feb/early march.

then i have to think about starting work.

now THIS has me a little worried more than anything else. principally because i've been where i am for a long time, nearly 7 years. therefore of course, i'm well established, well known (for good and bad i'm sure) and it's easy to get on with everything. moving somewhere new after all that time holds a certain amount of fear for me, just because it'll all be starting again; new people, new processes etc. but i guess on the plus side i'm more senior and got mroe experience and stuff now, so i'm sure it'll be fine. plus it's probably getting near time for a change anyway.

new recordings up from recent session

you can download them from there too.

this made me laugh

perhaps you will too.

cycled up to evans cycles at the chill factore up by the trafford centre to drop the mean machine in for service.

then ran home, beginning week two of the training schedule.

FUCK ME, THAT WAS A BASTARD OF A RUN.

two miles of sheer hell. perhaps i overdid it biking up to the shop in the first place.....ah well.

whilst the title of this post is pertinent in any case in relation to myself, i did actually watch the film of the same name on saturday night with THE WIFE^TM, as part of her preparation for the Manchester Great Run 10km on sunday.

film review: fucking shit

10km review: TW ran it in 1h 20m 23s. i think that's bloody good for a first time out, on limited training in the boiling heat. so well done wife! i followed her round the course on my bike, bit of support and all that, what?

my running is coming on. i've re-completed week one of the beginners schedule i'm following, and am about to bust into week two tonight.

so far, no major injuries have blighted me, but my knees are aching like fuck after i run, so maybe i'll have them to scupper me next. what fun.

well, after some weeks of back pain, osteopathy, back exercises and more osteopathy, i've returned to pounding the streets.

back to week one of the original training plan.

this, at least, accoring to THE WIFE^TM.

for why, you ask?

well, because i voiced the opinion that i doubted i could rejoin a rugby club after such a long time away from playing. not that i'd actually thought of joining in the first place, she just told me a lad she works with had mentioned they were looking for players.

how this therefore renders me without knackers is a mystery.

so things were going quite well, until the final run of my first week, when i felt my back tighten up about half way through my run.

now in the past i have suffered from a glass back as a result of injuring it swimming (for the love of god....i kid you not) some years ago. now instead of moving swiftly into week two and seeing progress, i'm facing a massive backward step of trips to the osteopath and physio to free it up and get moving again.

epic FAIL.

over the last few years i have noted that every time i get off my ass to do something like this, my body conspires against me to fail so i can't do it. i suspect this is a result of my sloth and laziness over years previous coming back to haunt me and laugh in my face.

woe, indeed, is me.

* Week 1 Run one min, walk 90 seconds. Repeat eight times. Do three times a week.
* Week 2 Run two mins, walk one min. Repeat seven times. Do three times a week.
* Week 3 Run three mins walk one mins. Repeat six times. Do three times a week.
* Week 4 Run five mins, walk two mins. Repeat four times. Do three times a week.
* Week 5 Run eight mins, walk two mins. Repeat three times. Do three times a week.
* Week 6 Run 12 mins, walk one min. Repeat three times. Do three times a week.
* Week 7 Run 15 mins, walk one min, Run fifteen mins. Do three times a week
* Week 8 Run 30 mins continuously.

Week one complete. I seem to be in one piece so far.

hypothetically of course:

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