Been a while since last writing...
Met up with Dani in Bangkok; all well. Stayed for one more night in the 'luxury' hotel, revelling in the joys of flushing, sit-on-able toilets - having found from a travel agent who told me the price shoulda been 700 baht rather than the 1100 baht the airport bollices charged. And when I went back to ask them, of course they knew nothing about such a price, said maybe it was another hotel that didn't include breakfast or something. So got the travel agent to book another night in the same hotel, same deal, same room, for about half the price.
Anyway, spent a day wandering around Bangkok looking at very lush temples and palaces and getting drizzled on and horribly hot and sticky viewing bits of the Buddha's breastbone and other such artefacts. When I was last in Ireland, there was a big hullabaloo about bringing some saint's corpse to a village in mid nowhere. Cultural similarities can be disconcerting. It was a relief to get on the aircon bus to Ko Pha Ngan - luxury style bus, reclining seats and bad videos and irritating English blokes who recline their seats right onto your knees and irritating German blokes who sit on the aisle opposite you when you find a seat away from the IEB and have the most cheesey feet known to humanity, or any species come to that.
Maybe not that luxury.
Anyway, got to Ko Pha Ngan / Ko Phangan / whatever, wish they'd standardise the spellings. Party island, as disapproved of by yermanno on The Beach, who returned from his travellers paradise to this place and thought it was all most dreadfully touristy. Finally saw the film for the first time sitting in a bar in the disapproved-of place. Hummmm. Well, it's not that bad at all. Very Thai - jungles and beach throughout; turquoise warm sea lapping on white beaches overlapped by palmtrees and beach bars with cheap beer; gorgeous tanned travellers (at least some of them), etc. Unfortunately, we decided to travel the island the other day. Not a bad idea, with scooters at just 2 squid a day to rent. So off we hied through the main road, which isn't entirely like a roller coaster insofar as it does not quite offer a loop-the-loop experience. Other similarities are remarkable though. Then we headed north to get to Thom Sadat. Not main road. Not a good idea. There were bits that had concrete, which were bliss. The rest of the 10 mile uphill trek were earthen gulfs and ruts just about wide enough for a wheel - if you're an expert scrambler. We just about managed on the way up (I took a couple of the easy bits and let Dani manage the rest). After an hour we figured we were in the wrong place and about-faced. If going up was tricky, going down was gruesome. The bike did not want to behave, nor did the road, and all the ruts we'd balanced on on the way up at 10 mph, became a lot more difficult when the brakes didn't seem to be quite doing the job. Took 2 spills and wimped out. A host of Italian guys - gentlemen, angels! - came along and bandaged us up and packed us onto a taxi and drove the scooter back to the main road (from which Dani, as the less injured party - drove back). Went back to the hotel to recover, and have been continuing with that non-exertive recovery in Had Rin since then.