By sticking to the more biased, but superior Fox News and avoiding BBC News Worldwide because there's no real news on it, just promos for Talking Movies and reports on why Egyptian lesbians are getting mardy about something or other, what's coming up next and the fact they keep trying to sell you things! Yes... the Beeb trying to sell you things!
This isn't what I didn't pay my licence fee for.
I've learned that there have been riots in Bangkok, with one person being killed - I hope my mate who lives there is safe. Apparently there is a country-wide strike tomorrow, which means shops will close at will, the transport system won't run to maximum capacity and all Thai workers will sleep on their shop floors or on the side of the road when they should be working... in short, no change there then.
Like the old Thai saying goes - "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day"
Hurricane Gustav missed New Orleans, "The Big Easy", thank the Lord there wasn't a repeat of Katrina, thats the worst thing that part of the world needs unless there's a Republican convention just up the road... Damn! Missed 'em.
Then Man City go and snatch Robinho from under Chelsea's noses for a British record fee!
And my brother got married! Unbelievable!
The service was apparently lovely, Edward was in his element, mingling and generally being an all-round international man of mystery, suave and sophisticated like James Bond. Seems Michelle has really brought him out of his shell... Well done that girl... now feed him up!
I mean, honestly - what's going on. I leave you lot alone for five minutes...
Right that's enough news, lets get back to the reason you are reading this - me!
So I stayed on Koh Tao for about a week with Bas, Dene, Sash, Nam et al - a great little island, but not much more to do than eat, drink, read and sunbathe. Oh, and get your hair cut into a mohawk.
Yes, I really did it!
So let me tell you about the flora and fauna of this country, palm trees dominate every skyline, when they're not out pick-pocketing, monkeys are trained to climb the palm trees and knock the coconuts down, while sea eagles are trained to catch fish from the sea and obediently bring them to their owners and baby orang-utans shipped in from Borneo sit in cages, filling opium pipes, skinning up joints and reading The Bangkok Post to their masters.
On Koh Tao we saw some giant igneous boulders that looked like they were cartoon backdrops from The Flintstones. Which is on TV every day, sometimes in English and sometimes in Thai... as is the Jetsons, but then sometimes I swear they have re-cut their own versions so you'll get Deputy Dawg and Snagglepuss talking to Popeye the Sailorman in Thai - very strange indeed, unless I dreamt it. I do love watching old re-runs of Ren and Stimpy though, especially when Ren Hoek loses it and says "Stimpy, you stooopid eediot!"
Where was I? Oh yes; fauna... orange wasps as big as your thumb, not just the last bit with the nail on, but your whole thumb. Dogs are everywhere, there was just a pair humping in the sea in front of me, which reminds me I really must get my rabies jabs when next in Bangkok. Either that or I must stop having sex with dogs. No easy feat when the dogs here are so cool they wear shades.
After we shared aa post-coital cigarette, this dog later taught me how to rummage through bins for food with my snout. 200-300 people die of rabies in Thailand every year, and it sounds the most awful death imaginable. Only 6 people have ever recovered from full-blown rabies who were then brain damaged beyond repair... yes, I've certainly done my research, but am more worried about my new best friend Nat as she volunteers at the local dog sanctuary twice a week.
Now y'all know of my arachnophobia, and I confess I even used to check under my duvet for the hundred-eyed, eight-legged freaks in Chiswick, but with a raging Changover, the screaming ab-dabs or what Richard Ashcroft would call "The Fear" (the DTs - which even wikipedia says makes you imagine giant spiders) and staying in a tree-canopied bungalow all of my own, the thought of tarantulas in my room makes me cower in my sleeping bag cover like a six year old mummy's-boy with all the lights on watching Fox News until daylight arrives like anti-venom.
Not that any of us Farang can sleep; everyone you meet complain they thought roosters were meant to crow at dawn. Not here, in what I have christened "the country that makes no sense"
The roosters start at 3.12 every night without fail.
So long as the only tarantulas I see are behind glass frames like the one in the Men Behaving Badly living room, thats fine, but even they wierd me out a bit.
Since there's little point going back to the same town, I'm on a different opart of Samui, Bo Phut instead of Chaweng, near the Big Buddah (and before you ask no, its not Channel 4's new reality TV show) and it's like a totally different island...
There's no girly-bars inviting you for "sucky sucky" - good job - I don't even like ice-pops.
Its far more.... bohemian, insomuch as there are less shouty Oirish and Italian Stallions; you can tell the Italians as they're the ones in white speedos, while (conversely like Yin and Yang) ze German males wear black g-strings.
Like I say, I'm in my own little bungalow, but my friend Natalie has her own house where we watch DVD's when not out on the town. She's rented it for three months after running away from her TEFL course in Chang Mai up north. Seems everybody's running away from something... except me, of course.
Nat and I see each other every day, usually at night for dinner and drinks, with last night being reserved primarily for the latter. After about £20 on cocktails (that's alot of cocktails here, trust me) we went to the beach, where with the contents of my pockets I once again became DJ Willer.
As two lightning storms raged overhead, like Indonesian Gods battling each other for supremacy, Rufus Wainright, Sigur Ros and Oasis provided the soundtrack from the beach as we swam at 4.00 a.m. for over half an hour - probably the longest I've ever spent in the ocean... amazing what a twenty-two year old girl in nothing but her pants can make you do, eh?
From the bar I'm sitting in writing this you can see the boat that she wanted me to swim to...
Now we all know its a myth that I can't swim, I'm just not very confident, but even in my pina-Colada addled state I refused to go out of my depth... When we were done fooling around in the water, doing Kung Fu Panda moves and when she wasn't on the phone to her boyfriend in the UK (yikes, not again, Will!) Sopping wet and falling over drunk; Nat so drunk she was falling over twice a minute and when offered a helping hand up, she succeeded every time in pulling me on top of her into the sand.
She wanted to ride her scooter the three or four miles home but on account of her not being able to stand I refused, weighed up the option that I ride her back and stay at hers (I feel fine, my brain told me at the time) then convinced her it was a better plan to stay at mine. She'd have to share my double bed, but she was fine with that, so long as I "didn't rape her".
I reluctantly agreed.
In all seriousness, its nice to have someone to discuss my favourite books with, someone who likes all the same comedy like Father Ted, The Day Today, Brass Eye and Alan Partridge with and someone who understands my jokes about 1980's board games. I think she feels the same as before I arrived she "stayed in most nights" we meet at the same time in the same place every night, except for tonight as I've made it half an hour later so you lucky people can read this...
Amazing the difference between my mate Bas (20) and Nat - I guess girls really do grow up quicker.
Except when they're drunk.
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