Massage course was good: rather more complicated than I thought - there are many things you can be doing wrong at any point, and I always manage to do almost all - thumbs facing wrong direction, weight should be on other leg, this hand should be on that side of the arm - never mind ensuring you hit the precise points. But very enjoyable (after all, at least half the time was spent receiving massages - "oooh, you'll have to show me that one again - I'm a bit slow, me..."). My teacher, Surin, was a bit odd: he came across to me at first as slightly schitzophrenic - frequently abruptly twisting his head to look into space and mutter incomprehensible stuff, and his conversation tended to jump illogically around without ever getting to a point. But an English bloke recommended him, and he was close to my guesthouse, and cost a reasonable 500B (about 8 quid) a day for one on one tuition, proceeding at my pace, so I figured I'd try him out. When it got down to instructing on massage, he proved to be a lot more coherent, and a pretty good teacher overall. Another girl who was receiving evening instruction from him reckoned all the weird stuff was to impress people with his guru qualities, so they'd think he was talking to the spirits. Anyway, ended up doing massage till 7 or so on average, so never did make it to Thai boxing. Still, I reckon I can probably do as much damage with a massage as I could with Muay Thai.
Anyway, back to Bangkok for a last day's shopping, planning to stock up on cheap clothes. Forgot that I hate shopping for clothes, and couldn't find anything I particularly liked, so that was a waste of a day. And onwards to Oz, via a 6 hour stopover in Ho Chi Minh city (the things I'll do to save 50 quid.. I don't mind 6 hours sitting in a bus, but 6 hours sitting in an airport drives me mad. Plus, the aircon was turned to freezing; there was no ATM to get money and the bar, which was the only warm place, didn't take creditcards, or kindly to travellers trying to get warm without paying). Security has sure stepped up: they confiscated my Swiss card, which has a blade as long as the first joint on your thumb... and I only just realised I forgot to collect it, if it ever arrived in Sydney. Arse.
So here I am in Oz. Woke up this morning at 30,000 feet over the Artesian basin (according to the flightmap), which was some hours of red&brown mottled earth, without a sign of humanity other than an occasional skein of road, stretching mostly straight from one horizon to the next. Sydney, however, is proving grey and cold and generally disorientatingly Londonish, with everything familiar but slightly wrong - King's Cross next to Paddington? All the signs and sounds are English, which is a welcome relief, but the people seem friendly, which is again not correct. I guess it's post-asian travel that makes the western style all seem immediately familiar and homelike, and only second glance shows that it isn't quite what you expect from home.
Or something. Maybe I'm just tired: the usual 3 hours sleep and few hours time difference kicking in. Be meeting my friend Kate from my college days after she finishes work; crashing with her for a couple of days before settle down somewhere. Meanwhile, time to decide what to do with this country.