Pushing up the Slieve

The Bank Holiday weekends always inspire me to do something beyond laundry and a walk round the city centre. That extra day off seems to motivate everyone to take advantage of it. And so, Tommy-boy myself and a few friends found ourselves up in the Mourne Mountains for a day-long hike. The Mourne Mountain range rises abrubtly out of the sea and to an elevation of about 2,700 feet. On the drive from Dublin to Belfast (a drive I know all too well) they come dramatically into view just across the border into Co. Down and I've always wanted to climb in them.

After sorting out all the major details, the group of us picked out a mountain in the range to climb called Slieve Binian. It looked like a reasonable hike of about 8 miles and isn't the highest peak in the range so we thought we could all do it no bother... But sometimes the best laid plans fail... We drove along the coast for miles looking for the beginning of the trail and finally found what we thought was the Slieve Binian carpark...

We jumped on to a half-assed trail and just started to climb. And then we lost the trail but continued to climb. Everyone kept looking round asking, "Is that the trail?" There were a few mirage trails: "That's the trail, I see it up ahead!" Fortunately, since there are few to no trees on these mountains it's near impossible to get lost in them. Yer either going up towards the summit or down towards the sea.

Finally we came upon some other hikers with a map who informed us that we were not climbing Slive Binian but were in fact climbing, Slieve Donard, the highest mountain in the range and in NI. The hikers pointed us back in the direction of the real and actual trail (saving our ankles from prickly gorse and mud slides) and away we went. It was a good climb, with the last peak being the steepest and hardest and if it wasn't for my pride, I might have given up but was so very glad I didn't when I saw the incredible views from the summit.

All in, we were up and down the mountain in six hours, slightly weatherbeaten, midge eaten and with sore feet but otherwise feeling aces. If anyone's up for a hike... I'm in.

Daisy is a Lady

From Jerry Springer to Fat-free Fro-Yo, there are many opportunities to shake my head and say, "Only in America," in that sad world-weary voice (also used for disappointing but slightly amusing children.) It's less often that I can say, "Only in Ireland," (unless we're talking about 43 straight days of rain). That is, untill now.

I came into work the other morning and my work-colleague was talking about a beauty pageant he'd been to the day before. Everyone was fussing over the contestants, dolling them up and getting them ready for show time. These little beauties were shiny-clean, and looking their very best, nails filed, lips painted, and perfectly groomed. You might be wondering what's so unusual about that, Beauty pageants happen every day all over the world, but the contestants in this affair, were not little Jon Benet Ramsays but were, in fact, Fresian Cows. It was an extravaganza of Bovine beauties... The cows were brushed and oiled (to show off their attractive black and white spots). They were placed in "decorative" pens complete with gingham drapes and milk jugs filled with wild flowers. They had their lips painted and their nose-hairs plucked and last but not least, these farmland hotties were fitted with special raised platforms to make them look taller. (No Joke!) After I stopped laughing and got back into my chair, I realised that I was actually disappointed to have missed it. Afterall, how often do you get the opportunity to go to a cow beauty pageant?! Seriously. Only in Ireland. ;)

Taking off my Aran Jumper and throwing it on the ground and stomping on it...

Well. Finally. Just when I had given up and decided to slit my wrists, the sun appeared again. It was still lashing down last Friday afternoon when I set off with a big group of people to Co. Clare for the weekend. One of my softball friends turned 30 and she organised a big trip away with her friends from all over Ireland and everyone converged on the west coast on Friday night with rain gear and beer. After we'd all resigned ourselves to the fact that we were heading off camping in possibly the worst weather of the summer, we woke up on Saturday morning (in a hostel) to the most glorious day. This must be what people in drought feel like when it finally rains... It was absolutely divine. We took the ferry from a little town called Doolin over to Inis Oirr (pronounced Inishere), the smallest of the Aran Islands. On a bad day, I'd say a small island might be claustrophobic (nothin' to do but sit in the pub and get locked) but it was really, really, lovely on a hot sunny day. We spent the entire day outside, took walks, ate icecream, and generally soaked up the sun.

Since the weather was good, we decided to go fer it and camp. There's no campground on Inish Oirr so you just pitch your tent wherever suits. We found a sweet spot behind a dune on the beach and set down. Unfortunately one of the people who was supposed to bring a tent bailed and we found ourselves in the clown car situation of having 4 people trying to sleep in a 2 man tent... It's a good thing we stayed out until 3am at the pub - the less time spent in the tent, the better! In the end, there were only three of us in the tent but it was a serious tight squeeze! I really love camping, sleeping out in the air and waking up outside but I was a happy girl when I arrived home on Sunday night and snuggled into my lovely, warm, soft bed. And I only have to share it with one other person. ;)

I'd like to say that that streak of good weather continued... but that would clearly be too much to ask. I got actually drenched to the skin this morning as it poured buckets out of the sky during my entire 25 minute walk to work... It's lunchtime now and my jeans are still wet and my shoes are like two little lakes next to my desk. Monsoon season continues... Why exactly did I move to Ireland and not Tahiti?!

Click to pic above to see the exotic Irish sun making its brief appearance on Inis Oirr!

A Glasgow Kiss

For those of you who might not be familiar with Glasgow, a "Glasgow Kiss," isn't a peck on the cheek but is actually a headbutt to the nose...

Contrary to popular opinion, we found Glaswegians to be beyond nice. Our taxi driver was super chatty, a random punter on the street gave me his subway ticket with free fare on it and everyone we talked to was generally extremely friendly and helpful. The reputation of Glaswegians as a bit rough and tumble probably has more to do with the fact that it's home to the world's most contentious football rivalry (Celtic vs. Rangers) than the nature of the population at large. In fact, Glasgow is full of incredible architecture (both Arts and Crafts and Victorian), a ton of free museums, lots of indie cafes and ethnic grocery stores and an enormous park that's both beautiful and seemingly well used. It's also home to a lot of people whose accent is completely indecipherable. I did a lot of smiling and nodding and whispering under my breath, "What the f*ck is he saying?!" The wedding ceremony might as well have been in latin. ;) Fortunately, most of the other wedding guests who were from Belfast (only a short distance away and with it's own mental accent) also had no idea what any of the Glaswegians were saying so I didn't feel so bad about my cluelessness...

We managed to stay out at the wedding until the wee hours of Saturday and still get up and get a bit of sightseeing in on Sunday. Amazingly there was a bit of sun in Scotland on our last day there. After my last trip there a few years ago, I was expecting an arctic chill. Climate change must be in effect when Glasgow is sunny and warm and Dublin is drowning in it's own precipitation.

What's that on my face?!!!!

Well, it's certainly not sun. The running joke in these parts is that we wouldn't recognize the sun on our faces even if we saw it. Which we haven't. For, well, either 38 or 43 days according to various local radio stations. Sure, the sun's made a few brief appearances: one beautiful afternoon playing softball, a nice enough evening sitting at an outdoor cafe with my work-mates, but overall, it's been gray, gray, and more gray with rain that regularly lashes out of the sky making my umbrella into an inside out lollipop, totally useless for keeping me dry.

I think I'm going through the five stages of grieving now, and I certainly haven't gone anywhere near acceptance. I'm stuck somewhere between denial and anger. As I was having my daily whinge to Tom about another day of 'Fucking Rain,' he pointed out to me that when you grow up in Ireland, you just don't expect to have summer and that instead of summer, Ireland has beer. hhhhhmmmmm. Not a good enough trade as far as I'm concerned. As far as the weather goes, I've been drinking a lot more tea to cope than beer. My teeth are probably going to turn yellow and fall out. Either that or my poor over-caffienated heart is going to give out. Maybe I should switch to beer. Better a belly than heart palpatations... ;)

Yours in wet wellies,
D.

No. 31 has Arrived

Making up for lost time... my all intimidating, milestone of a 30th birthday went by with a bit of a whimper so I decided that my 31st should be a proper piss-up. Pizza and red wine and communist bars and disco dancing and fat frogs in full effect. Click on the pic for the full badness. ;)

Work on Display

Hey All,

After many months of work, the Dcoy website is up and running... If ya wanna see some recent work (some mine, some by our other sweet designers) have a look. The url is: www.dcoy.ie

Am off to Glasgow this weekend so photos of Scottish debauchery will be forthcoming. :)

International Rules

Summer has finally truly arrived in Ireland with temperatures (drum-roll please) above the 70 degree mark. It was gorgeous on Saturday and one of my softball teamates suggested a picnic in the park. We ended up spending 5 hours there in flawless sunshine. Loveliness. I even played my first game of Cricket (with a couple of South African guys, an Ozzie, two Americans and a few of the local variety.) We even adopted a couple of Nigerian kids and added them to the game for a while. Practically a model UN! ;) We also had a throw-around with an American football but strangely I'm much better at Cricket than I am at football. I've never mastered the art of the spiral throw. All this sportiness was interspersed with bouts of eating...melting bits of cheese, strawberries and red wine handily disguised in plastic juice bottles.

Truly one of the best days I've had in a long time. The night ended (as they all do here) in the pub. It was great craic talking to people from all over the world about everything from the price of gold in Western Australia to the taste of springboc to Sex-Ed for 50-year-old Irish women to the best ways to get laid in Dallas if you happen to have an Australian accent (a long story...) And then there was the Lesbian Penis story (one for another day I promise. ;) ) Such good stuff. If only every day could be this warm and sunny and filled with good company and good beer.

Northy Goodness

Here are a few photos from a recent trip to Donegal. It was Tommy's friend's 30th birthday and nearly 40 people converged on a tiny town in Donegal to celebrate. The first night, we all went out for a meal and then to the pub (of course) which featured a "local" band whose oldest member couldn't have been older than 15. (Check out the pic!)

It was one of those weekends that was a perfect mix of debauchery and ruggedness. A night at the pub follwed by a day spent outdoors. It was the first good weather of the summer and I was actually able to go swimming (with a wet suit of course!) in the icy Atlantic. I also borrowed a body board and I can't tell you how amazing it was to be in the water again after 10 months on dry land. I was meant to live in the tropics I think. If there's anything better than surf and sun, (even if the sun is weak and the water is subzero) I don't know what it is. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of our swimming adventures or the pristine beach we were on. (Fortunately, there are not photos of me in my wet suit... ;) ) Swimming was followed by a pub lunch in my favorite Donegal local. (I had raw oysters and soup and brown bread and hot port...Irish food at it's simple best.) And then a trip to a nearby waterfall and an evening spent sitting by a roaring fire. When Ireland is bad, it's cold and wet and dark and dismal, but when the sun shines on this little island, there is really nothing like it, and Donegal is it's pinnacle.

Age before Beauty?

Time is cruel, at least that's what they say... As my 31st birthday approaches, I think I'm beginning to understand the phrase in a whole new way... Lest you think I'm about to blabber on about the passage of time or something that actually matters, let me reassure you that what I'm really on about is cellulite and crow's feet.

So... there I was, wandering through the aisles of Penneys looking for a cheap pair of track suit bottoms (that's sweat pants for my North American peeps). I found a few pairs that weren't pink and didn't say baby or hot-stuff or jail-bait on them and off I went to the dressing rooms. Now dressing rooms are just cruel places... maybe light is the real problem and not time cuz that greenish flourescent light would make Cindy Crawford look like $hit. I have always been slightly horrified by all the lumps and bumps of my physique in front of a full length mirror under that unforgiving light but I have now graduated to looking back and forth from my ass to my face with equal horror.... cottage cheese leg...crow's foot....lumpy tummy...laugh lines....dimply ass...furrowed brow. It's enough to make a girl run out the door and straight to the botox clinic. (Okay, maybe I do still have a few principles left. I'm not yet desperate enough to inject poisons into my face... but give me a few years.)

It's great to look forward to huh? A lifetime (well, maybe half a lifetime at this point) of insecurities and slow downhill slide. I'll have to start slathering my face with oil of olay while running on a treadmill, eating handfuls of anti-oxidant vitamins, and listening to stress-reducing new-age music on my ipod except that that sounds pretty horrible. Ah well, fuck it, I'd rather eat a bowl of ice-cream and take a nap... Does icecream have any anti-aging properties?

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

Life has gotten ridiculously busy as of late. The softball season has started. Work has been mental and I've been spending my weekends everywhere but in my house. For now, here's a few wedding weekend photos to keep things ticking over... Went to a black-tie wedding a few weeks ago and snapped everyone in their monkey suit best. As seems to happen after a few drinks, we were all a bit giddy and decided that we should all do our best impressions of mafia bosses and trophy wives. Good thing I had a camera to kodak the moment. ;)

I've decided to give flickr the boot since they have been bought by Yahoo and are hiding half my photos in an effort to make me pay them to host my images so here's the trial run of my new photo hosting peeps, picasa. Click on the pic and see if they're any good.

Cheers.

Ahead of myself, behind the game

I'm back on Irish soil and back into the routine and my to-do list is about five miles long (as it always is after you go away and neglect your everyday tasks for three weeks.) So... more Berlin updates and photos later, for now, here are a ridiculous amount of thailand photos for your viewing pleasure. Not sure how long the links will be valid but there are so many photos, I didn't want to clutter up my web photo archive, so kodak gallery it is... Happy viewing.
thailand 2007

From Bangkok to Berlin

As you can see, I'm having a bit of wanderlust lately. Maybe it's because I've seen off a few friends lately on round the world trips and I want to get in on the action or maybe Tommy-boy and I were a little over zealous with the credit card this winter when the dark, dreary Irish winter was making us want to run in any direction as long as it was away from TV watching and stodgy-food and routine... Long story short, here I am, one week after returning from Thailand, in scenic Berlin. To be honest, when we had to get up at 4am the other morning to catch the flight, the thought of going anywhere other than my bed was pretty exhausting, but now that we're here, we're having a really good time. As soon as we arrived and saw the amazing architecture, street upon street of trendy cafes and boutique shops and incredible museums, I immediately got my second wind. We went to a really interesting exhibition yesterday called 'art and propoganda' which explored the way that Germany, Italy, The Soviet Union, and the US used visual mediums to promote their agendas in the 1930s and 1940s. Incredible stuff. There was everything from the WPA photographers (Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans etc...) and Norman Rockwell illustrations to Italian futurist portraits of Mussolini and El Lissitzky Russian Constructivist Posters... and of course plenty of disturbing Nazi propaganda. The whole exhibition was housed in an I.M Pei building (very modern, lots of geometry and glass) which is connected to the German History museum next door which is housed in a baroque German building with a central coutryard full of artists and designers peddling their wares. So far, Berlin has been full of great art, architecture and design interspersed with kick-ass cafe culture and a damn good pint o' German beer now and again. Not bad at all.

More than a taste for Thai

Green Papaya Salad is my new favorite food! We went out for dinner last night at a little restaurant in a bamboo hut along the main road in Ko Lanta and had yet another amazing thai feast. Green Papaya salad is a little slice of heaven: Shredded green papaya with a little shredded carrot, roasted peanut and sometimes string beans or cucumber with some kind of sweet citrusy sauce made of lime juice and possibly a little papaya juice or sugar and maybe a dash of fish sauce. It is incredible. We've decided to take a half day thai cooking class while we're here so hopefully I'll be able to find out exactly what's in it and replicate it back home cuz I don't think I can live without it.

So far, Thailand has been the only country (outside of Italy of course) where I can happily eat the local food every day for every meal and be completely happy about it. It's so light and so full of all my favorite things, fresh veggies, noodles, rice, fresh chilis, lime, lemongrass and basil and seafood of all varieties. In the nearly two weeks, I've been here, I have only had one bad meal (the saltiest pad thai ever in a beachside place now known to us only as the MSG Hut... haha.) Last night, Tommy boy and my lady friends took a long walk on the beach at sunset. It's great to be able to follow the light and tide so closely and watch how they interact and change. Sure beats looking at a computer screen all day. Anyway, the fisherman come up on the beaches at sunset and fill their longtail boats with fish and other seafood: giant crabs, and red and white snapper and giant prawns and barracuda and they build these roaring fires to cook them on. The diners pick their fish where it gets weighed and tossed onto the barbecue to join the already cooking whole potatoes wrapped in foil roasting on the grills. They also set up tables with fresh salads and pots of sticky rice. God, did I say I love thai food yet!

The best thing about it, is that unlike France where I ate cheese by the truckload or Spain where I lived on Pico e Pane (bread and crackers), you can eat thai food all day and still look halfway decent in a bikini. Good stuff.

Creature Comforts

I was walking on the beach last night around midnight with Tom and we were looking up at all the stars. Now, I don't know much about astronomy but it really looked to us like we saw the big dipper... except that it was upside down and in a corner of the sky. If that's really the case and we're not astronomical idiots, it is my first glimpse into a completely foreign sky, a truly different perspective on the earth. It was quite something... The beach was almost entirely empty at that point except for a few lanterns lighting up a few bars and some roving wild dogs exploring the beach who kept running up between Tom and I, appearing in the dark. Thailand is a place lived much nearer to the creatures of the world than my sanitised apartment in Dublin. You are hardly ever without company of some sort, whether it be insect or amphibian. At first, it's a little disconcerting, being used to a creature-free life but after a while, it becomes kind of great. There are geckos large and small absolutely everywhere and in every colour and size. The biggest ones, hide in the rafters and croak like throaty frogs and happily, they all eat bugs. There are frogs and toads, albino and spotted, hiding behind the bathroom mirror and in the grass. There are birds making all sorts of sounds in the trees that seem to big and impressive for bird-song. There are (unfortunately) cockroaches the size of my palm skittering about at sunset and (yikes) crawling up the bathroom pipes in our first bungalow. There are cats and dogs everywhere (looking decrepit and half-dead in Bangkok but vibrant and playful on the islands.) Roosters and geese appear where you least expect them, on city streets and inside doorways of houses. There are butterflies that seem to glide and then fall and then glide again in a least graceful manner. And then there's the beach... Hermit crabs of all sizes in all types of Crab accomodation. Giant Squid, Puffer-fish, sand crabs and shellfish. It's Life with a capital L and it surrounds you and envelops you. Geckos eating ants and ants eating geckos, Crabs eating squid and birds eating crabs. At first it makes you a little squeamish, even as you try to pretend that it's perfectly grand but after a few days, it's wonderful because everywhere you go, you discover something new (or it discovers you.) I could definitely get used to this (cockroaches excepted of course!)

Well my time has run out once again. I apologize if these blog entries read like a diary. It's hard to organise my thoughts and coherently spit back out all of my experiences here while I'm racing the clock and the slow internet connections (and roosters and thai babies and sunstroke...haha.)

Back to the beach!

Snorkel heaven, Tuk-Tuks and Thai Babies

Snorkelling is my new favorite thing. :) Tommy-boy and I have gone twice on this trip and both times, it was like swimming in a tropical fish tank. The first trip left from Khao Lak and was a day trip to the Ko Similan islands. The boat takes you out to various reefs and just dumps you in the water for about 45 minutes at a time and what you see is incredible. Coral in all colours waving in the water, fish of all sizes, with black and yellow stripes and aqua blue with shimmering pink scales, schools of fish which swim all around you, sea anemone and clownfish, parrotfish and zebra fish, and the water is a crystal green-blue. It's actually heaven. The Ko Similans are the epitome of a tropical paradise... white sand, palms and clear water and they're a national park so they're protected from development. The other snorkeling trip we took left from Ko Lanta and took us to another national park island called Ko Rok. Both trips offered spectacular trips and by the second trip, Tommy-boy (who was nervous about snorkeling at first) was the first one off of the boat and the last one one and was dragging me around the reef to point out fish and coral. It was great to see.

We left Khao Lak on Friday morning and had to flag down a bus on the side of the road to make the two-hour journey to Phuket (for 90 baht per person - the equivalent of 2 euro!). It was a local bus with piped in Thai elevator music...haha... but it was air-conditioned and we made it to Phuket in good time. After that we had to find a taxi. The drivers get kick backs for delivering farangs to various tourist industries and bartering for fare is standard so getting a taxi can be a bit more complicated than it seems... As soon as we arrive in any given place, we're swarmed with people yelling, "taxi!" "tuk-tuk!" etc... and you have to wade through and try to figure out who looks reputable and who will take you where you want to go for a reasonable price. After walking around Phuket for a while, we got ourselves a reasonably priced taxi and made it to the pier. Unfortunately, the ferry operators decided to jack the price up by a few hundred baht and since the ferry route goes through Ko Phi-Phi which is tourist central, we had no choice but to pay. The ride was thankfully smooth and airconditioned and we ate pineapple on a stick and settled in for a few hours until we literally had to jump from one boat to the next to get from the Phi-Phi boat to the smaller boat which would take us to Ko Lanta.

We took the Ko Lanta version of a tuk-tuk to our bungalows when we arrived at the pier which is a motorbike fitted with a roof and side car with a long bench. You can get five people into these things! The transport has been creative to say the least! It was such a relief to arrive in Ko Lanta after an entire day on buses and boats and when we arrived, our friends, Jess and Melinda were sitting by the ocean waiting for us. Loveliness.

We've decided to base ourselves from Ko Lanta for the rest of our trip. This island is beautiful and there are so many things to do. There are small thai children who want to get onto this computer and a rooster keeps crowing from somewhere behind me so I'm off. More later.

Cheers.
D.

More bang for your Baht

Hi All,

Sorry for the long silence but I've been away from the internet for the past couple days, and god knows that can be a good thing sometimes. I am having such a blast here, I don't know where to even start. We've done so much over the past week.

The rest of our stay in Bangkok involved a trip to an incredible temple Wat Po which has an enormous, gilded reclining buddha inside an equally bejeweled temple. Even the buddha's feet are inlaid with mother of pearl. We took a ferry up river to get there which gave us a great view of a bunch of other riverside temples and then we took it back down to chinatown where we wandered through the flower and vegetable market and ate a tasty indian dinner in the tiny restaurant hidden down an alley. The kitchen was next to the restaurant down this alley and we could see the cook making kebabs. The Rough guide reccommended it or we never would have found it and given the cleanliness... or lack there of, of chinatown, we were a bit skeptical but the food was delicious, light nan breads, and indian curries and cool lime soda...mmmm. We also hit up the Bangkok aquariam which featured an enormous coral reef and shark tank. Strangely, it also had corporate sponsorship which manifested itself in brand name washing machines and cars converted into tropical fish aquariams... cool but wierd. The next day we got up early and went to tour "Jim Thompson's House" which was put together by this American who was born in 1907 in Delaware and fell in love with Thailand after being stationed there for some reason. He brought together six traditional thai houses from various parts of thailand and had the disassembled and brought to Bangkok where he had them put back together again and interconnected to make one large compound. Thai architecture is very minimal looking on the inside and very much to my taste, lots of dark wood and clean lines and open air. There was also a glorious garden with lush tropical vegetation and flowers and sculpture.

We learned the value of bartering at the Patpong night markets where all the vendors quote ridiculous prices just to see if anyone is dumb enough to take the bait. I still probably got stroked but picked up a great pair of beach shorts and handbag for under a tenner. The Patpong market is also home to the Thai sex industry so while trying to buy cheap asian goods, the farangs are accosted by people trying to sell you the ping-pong show... while beautiful thai prostitutes lean out of doorways in black bikinis. I'll leave the mechanics of the ping-pong show to your imagination but the ping-pong is not the only feature of these thai sex shows... the touts hand you a list of other things that these women do with their "lady gardens". Yikes.

Tuesday was a traveling day and we flew to phuket and took a taxi up to Khao Lak. The taxi driver was a boy-racer who overtook motor-bikes, tuk-tuks and songthaews with ease and none of the taxis have seatbelts! Luckily we arrived in one piece to Poseidon Bungalows down a dusty, dirt road onto a beautful ocean front outcropping. Our wooden bungalow was on the end of the path and had a little porch looking out onto a wide blue sea with pink hibiscus flowers blooming all around it. We spent the first day moving from the beach to the open air restaurant and just tried to adjust to the fact that we were truly and properly on our holidays!

Well, I haven't caught you up yet, but I've been sitting here for too long already and it's time to get back into the sun. More on the Ko Similian and Ko Lanta islands soon.

Lots of Love from tropical climes.

D.

Sawasdee from Thailand!

After a ridiculously long flight sandwiched between a 68 year old Christian Missionary and a snoring Tommy-boy, I have made it to Bangkok, our first stop in our uber accelerated bakcpacking holiday. Good stuff. So, far it's been fabulous, even the twelve hours of flying wasn't as bad as it could've been. Thai Airlines kicks ass. The food is quite edible, they come around periodically offering you all the booze, water, mango juice etc... that you could want to drink. They put orchids and free toothbrushes (new ones!) in the loos and then present you with a fresh pink, orchid pin on your departure. So, far we've found the thai's to be really friendly and lovely (bar a few randomers who come up pretending to be your friend and then try to sell you stuff... but you can't really blame them for trying.) We were able to check into our hotel early in the morning and get a much needed kip in before braving the city and the day.

It's hard to know where to start in describing Bangkok. It is definitely not for the faint hearted! According to our taxi driver, Bangkok is home to 11 million people and feels nearly endless in it'size. It's hot, hot, hot, like the hottest August day in Boston (not that I'm complaining!) and wherever you go you are hit with smells both horrendous and heavenly. It's got everything from the fanciest uber-modern, air-conned malls to the most derelict corners complete with mangy stray dogs, half-collapsed buildings and the occasional rooster. The whole place is an explosion in colour. The Wats (temples) are grand, gilded, palace like structures full of colourfully dressed people and delicious incense sticks burning in the bases of potted plants sprouting bright yellow flowers. The tuk-tuks are bright blues and greens and the taxi's are electric pink. There are vivid little shrines built in random corners like the edge of an open market or on a building site to bring good luck (I think.) We rode about 5 km in a tuk-tuk tonight to come up to Khao San Road (backpacker land) and it was fabulous to see Thailand whizzing by at night, with it's monuments and street vendors and the wind blowing in on all sides. We arrived in one piece despite the fact that road safety seems to be significantly less interested in safety than any other place I've ever been. Throngs of people can be seen stuffed into the back of open pick-ups and speeding down the highway. While riding in the tuk-tuk, we saw two young thai women and a baby of about 2 all riding along beside us on a motorbike (with no helmets.)

We also went to the Chatachuk market today which is an enormous, densely packed open market made up of interconnected tin shacks and open air stalls creating a maze of every possible item you could imagine. You could buy everything from knock-off adidas trainers, to strawberry smoothies, to necklaces, to fried locusts to chopsticks. It was amazing fun to browse through all of this stuff (especially as most of it costs pennies.) We ate our first street vendor food, super-spicy bowls of noodles and extra cold bottles of water.

Tonight, we've been exploring Khao San Road, an overload of neon and street stalls and tanned backpackers and thai babies all flowing en masse down a little strip of road. We had the most incredible thai dinner at an outdoor restaurant, Singha and red curry and noodles and fresh rolls and brown rice. Heaven.

Now, the lack of a proper night's sleep for the past few days is catching up and I'm almost out of internet time, so that's all for today. More soon.

Lotsa love to you all.

D.

Sat Nav in Norn Iron

That's Satellite Navigation in Northem Ireland for those of you not familiar with a) modern technology or b) the local vernacular of a contested area of the world in the North of Ireland. Check out this hilarious wind-up. Good luck even understanding the 'Jon Joe' if yer not familiar with the Norn Iron accent...

www.scrabo.co.uk/jonjoead.mp3
www.jonjoe.net

The Darndest Things...

Funerals are a bit different all over the world but I find that no matter where they are, the coming together of family and friends mean that all of the best, funniest, stories come out, some may be those family stories that everyone’s heard a million times and some come out of the blue. Here’s one for the archives:

It was the late 1970’s and Tommy-boy was only a wee thing toddling around Belfast with his mummy and daddy. They had a friend who was not only a bit clumsy but also a bit of a potty mouth and was prone to saying, “f*cking Jesus” whenever he dropped something/stubbed his toe/lost his keys etc…

Fast forward a few months and wee Tommy is in the local butcher shop with his mommy. It’s packed out with people getting their shopping in. Now I don’t know if this is actually true but I imagine the other shoppers to be mostly women, perhaps middle-aged moms and grannies getting the meat for Sunday lunch; a solidly ‘good-Catholic’ type of North Belfast lady and I imagine that the butchers was a small shop, a little local hole-in-the-wall (as it still is today.) So, Tommy and Mommy are in the queue. The lady in front of them is placing her order and asks the butcher what kind of cheeses he has today at which point wee Tommy looks up and says to his mommy (and inadvertantly the whole shop) “fucking cheeses.”