Category: English

After the 12 hour flight I took a series of five trains I pre-booked to Kexbrough and arrived there at around 2pm. Katz was waiting for me in the train station. I haven’t seen her in about 6 months so it was wonderful to meet her. We’re both staying at her friend’s place.

Kexbrough is in the English country side so it’s very beautiful here. It’s also pretty isolated – I couldn’t find an Internet connection because all the wireless networks around are secured and there is no coverage from the big companies (I’m writing this a day late.) It’s cold here but not too bad – between 5 and 10 degrees Celsius.

Anyway, I didn’t last long – I fell asleep at around 8pm after dozing off a few times. I couldn’t do anything meaningful, being so tired and all.

As promised, I went early to the airport and spent there most of the day. So there isn’t much to tell. I feel better than yesterday and looking forward to meeting Katz, The Prodigy’s shows and generally England.

Surprisingly enough, I have a few pictures to share (which I took out of pure boredom) from Suvarnabhumi airport today. Also note that I added pictures to yesterday’s post.

Today seemed to be going very well until I realized I was scammed. I was able to get back most of my money but lost about 100 USD. I was going to describe in length how this scam works but everything is described in this page.

Feeling thoroughly stupid I really hate this place now and happy that I have just one more day. For the rest of this day I’m going to focus on repacking for the colder England weather and tomorrow I’ll go to the airport at around noon and spend most of the day there until my flight at midnight.

UPDATE: I’m uploading just a few pictures of that day, but nothing that was part of the scam because they all look crappy to me even if they’re not. So all I’m left with are pictures of my own trip to Pantip Plaza computer shopping center.

I set out from Koh Phangan to Bangkok at around 2:00pm. 6 hours and taxi, ferry, taxi, plane and taxi later I was in my hotel in Bangkok. As usual, I immediately (after connecting to the Internet and a shower) went outside for my traditional aimless walking of the streets. It was a refreshing experience to once again roam the relatively busy streets of a big city. There’s just a lot to see. However, the entire area I’m located in is very tourist-oriented so I tried to walk the emptier streets to see if I can find some local gems. I enjoyed the walk, but saw nothing special.

Tomorrow I plan to do the following: visit the very tourist-y Grand Palace. I doubt I’ll be there longer than an hour or two. I tend to skim through those places. Then I’ll try and get myself a boat trip, which is almost 2 hours. The boat trip was recommended by some friends of mine who were here not long ago. After that I’m gonna go shopping and see if I can find a new cellphone for myself and for a friend that requested one. I guess that would be almost an entire day. In the evening I’ll try to find a place to hang out.

I noticed that I haven’t posted pictures in 11 days! Wow… I must have been busy. Not! :) Today I only have pictures from the flight itself, which was amazing because it was during sunset and the skies were full of clouds.

Today is the last day in Koh Phangan. I talked today with one of the seven readers of this blog and he asked me if I was enjoying myself. I asked him if it doesn’t show from what I’m writing that I’m enjoying myself, so he said I’m just reporting what I’m doing. And he’s right.

I loved it here in Koh Phangan. I could stay here many many more days doing the exact same things every day. Namely, nothing. But if that’s the case then it has to stop sometime and that time is tomorrow. As you know, I’m going to Bangkok for 2 days before my flight to England.

Other then that I had an amazing day because I talked to some friends from the near and far past and also got all kinds of good news and all those conversations and good news came one after the other in the past two and a half hours and now I’m so excited that I can’t go to sleep at 3:30am. And as I’m writing this I’m getting even more good news (not directly related to me, but still.) And I still have to pack for tomorrow. It shouldn’t take long, but I really should do it and get some sleep. Good night.

Not much to tell… a regular day here. Went running for the last time. The parties were OK but I didn’t stay long. I’m still aiming to go to sleep late this week and avoid some of the jet lag (it’s 2:30am right now.)

Today I also booked a hotel in Bangkok and all the documents for my upcoming travels this week. And there are a lot of those:

• Taxi ticket to Haad Rin pier.
• Ferry ticket to get to Koh Samui (where the airport is.) The taxi to the airport is not pre-booked.
• Plane ticket to Bangkok.
• Instructions page from the hotel website for the taxi driver to get me to the hotel (the taxi is not pre-booked.)
• My trip’s plane ticket for the flight to the UK.
• Heathrow Express ticket to get to Paddington subway station.
• Train ticket voucher for my trip to Darton (300km north of London.) The voucher needs to be replaced with actual tickets in Paddington station. Then I have to switch 3 trains to get to Darton. I’m pretty sure this is the weakest link of my trip to the UK – I’m so going to get lost/get off at the wrong station/miss a train. I have to be prepared for these.
• Map to show me how to walk the 2km to where Katz is (she’ll probably be waiting for me at the station, but just to be on the safe side…)

I don’t like it when I need so many documents with me but that’s how it is, I guess. Obviously I printed more than one copy of each of them, for backup.

Yesterday I ended up enjoying the party on the beach. There weren’t too many people so there was a lot of room for everyone, good music (it’s pretty much the same tracks every single night) and good atmosphere. I ended up going to sleep at 4:30am.

Today it rained a lot and I was recovering from the party so there isn’t much to tell. I forgot about one funny thing that happened 3 days ago: I got a phone call. I’ve been abroad for almost 2 months and practically… well… forgot how to answer the phone. I held the device in my hand, looking at it and trying to remember which button I should push to answer it. Once I did that it took me a second to realize I’m supposed to say “Halo” as I usually do :) The content of the call isn’t important – it was the army, checking where I’m going to be in the upcoming Passover holiday, as they do every holiday season (nothing to be alarmed about.)

Yesterday I got back from the rather quiet parties on the beach at half past midnight and 30 minutes after that it started pouring rain. Today there wasn’t much activity on the beach, so here I am posting at 1am. How is it that I’m still up and able to write a post at this late hour, you ask? Well, today after eating at around 11am and watching some Friends episodes I decided to go take a nap. That nap turned into a very deep 4 hour sleep. After that I just stayed in my room until I went outside to run.

I’m proud of myself for running four times this week. Each time I ran 15 times the length of Haad Rin beach, which I estimate at around 700 meters (so that’s a total of about 10km.) It takes me almost an hour to run that distance and at the end of it I’m all sweating and my body feels extremely hot. So it’s a good workout :) Today after the workout I got a Thai massage since I won’t be running tomorrow. I only have one more time to run (on Sunday) and the next workout after that will be after the 27th in the UK. I hope I’ll manage to run there at least two times a week until I go back home and start going to the gym again.

I still don’t feel tired. Maybe I’ll go down to the beach and see if things picked up there. I guess it’s good I’m up late – maybe it’ll soften the jet lag I’m about to experience in a week.

I’m just blogging so that I’ll have an entry for each day. This was a regular day of eating, napping, reading and running. It turns out that indeed there was a Half Moon party yesterday but it was shut down early by the police (apparently they didn’t “get paid” properly.) I’m going to go now and see if anything is happening on the beach. Good night.

p.s.

Ordering train tickets online for the UK is the worst online booking experience I’ve had in a while. I’ll check how much it costs to fly just because of the headache this is causing me.