After 7 months of bumming around it was time to get serious and find this new life I’d come out to find. Dave, a friend I’d met when I first came to Bangkok, set me up in an 'apartment' (one room bed-sit) in a chaotic Thai neighbourhood. It was a nice place, a bit smelly though as the eccentric landlady had 12 yappy type dogs and umpteen caged birds. Coming home on an afternoon was a very noisy but welcoming affair.

My mad landlady and her twelve very yappy dogs.

Dave had also set me up with a job at his school and I started in two days. After some frantic shopping searching for normal sized sensible clothes/shoes among the tiny Thai sizes, I finally kited myself out and was ready for the impending doom of the teaching world.

Dave demonstrating his love for our work on the ferry we daily took to school.

My teaching experience is something I won’t forget in a hurry. I was absolutely terrified on my first day, so much so I became sick with stress. I’d been told that my first lesson had been planned for me and to relax, but what they gave me was a single sheet of material that was embarrassingly low for the level of my first class. To make matters worse I was expected to teach the same lesson to all of my 5 classes for the same day! Talk about thinking on feet, deep ends and shit creeks!

Mahaprutaram School for girls, Bangkok, Thailand

One of my 15 classes. Look, they acutally listened to me and are working!

In a nutshell, I was teaching 50 kids to a class, 15 classes a week (thankfully I was only part time) but only seeing each class once a week. If you do your maths that’s 750 kids a week, an impossible task to monitor each child’s individual learning needs. There was no curriculum, or structure and very little material with which to plan your lessons. It was hell. I was the only person with a teaching qualification, and shortly realised that all the teachers were being employed because they were white and native English speakers, not on the strength of their teaching ability. A fact I found very disappointing, as I wanted my efforts to be rewarded in some way, else what was the point? Determined not to fail and do a good job I soldiered on. With thanks to Harry Potter's Hogwarts houses and a huge bag of sweets I soon learnt how to turn my lesson into competitions and things turned out much better for me. I was also soon offered some private lessons on a Saturday with some primary school aged children and soon realised I must be doing something right.

My private students that I taught at the weekend. The little girl on the right was my fav. She was so enthusiastic and so eager to please.

Being in Bangkok was great when I wasn’t working. As I was so central I had many friends drop in on me that I had met travelling previously. Rachel returned the day I started teaching, which was a bit stressful but it was great to have her back in Thailand. Samih and Jo dropped by whom I'd met in Phi Phi. Barry and Michael dropped by on the way to and from Koh Tao, and Andrew my Gooner friend from India came to stay for a while. Andrew and I had a fantastic Christmas together where we found an Irish pub in the heart of ex-pat Bangkok and ate the hugest Christmas dinner I’ve ever seen. Four courses comprising of duck pate and toast, a ginormas Christmas dinner with all the trimmings, Christmas pud and brandy cream, and finally mince pies and coffee. The day was topped off by a visit to the flicks to see King Kong. Beats a re-run on the Beeb of Jurassic Park any day.

Christmas Eve with Andrew, his chum and Samih.

Christmas dinner in Bangkok.

For the New Year I decided to head back to Koh Tao to see in 2006 with my much missed chums. Andrew came with as he was planning on doing his diving instructor course so it all worked out beautifully. I had the best New Year since Rosie’s and my Millennium New York trip and was a fitting way to end one of the best years of my life. We welcomed in 2006 at Choppers dancing to the Roaring Buoys and we watched the sun rise at Pure Lounge on the beach. This is also where I waved goodbye to my 6th pair of flip-flops as Al decided to throw them in the sea along with a host of other people's shoes. I finally conceded that Koh Tao and shoes do not mix and resigned myself by not buying another pair and stealing someone else's instead, which is what everyone else does.

An early start with Nick, Wib, Ian, Jim, little Ben and Sam. New Years eve at Choppers.

A drunk Andrew and me just after 2006 was welcomed in.

Paar, Rachel and Sam, 2006.

During my four days off work back in paradise, I had a lot of time to do a lot of thinking and came to the conclusion that Bangkok was not where I wanted to be. I only had seven more weeks of the term but I didn’t want to be spending any more of my year out as stressed as I was. I now knew I was a good teacher and it was something that I could come back to, but for now it wasn’t for me. I needed to be back with my friends in Koh Tao. So I went back to Bangkok, quit the job, and typically found my last week stress free because I knew I was leaving, and was even quite sad when I eventually did.

As I was due to be in Aus on the 1st of March the plan was to spend 3 weeks in Koh Tao and then 3 weeks heading overland through southern Thailand and Malaysia into Singapore where I was due to fly out from. This time in Koh Tao I spent my time helping out at a friends dive shop, Davey Jones’ Locker and diving with Siam where we went on a overnight trip to Ang Tong Marine Park, the inspiration behind the book 'The Beach'....

Ang Tong Marine Park.

Ialso went to Linn my Burmese friend's wedding...

The happy (?) couple with friends.

Took part in a failed attempt to break the world record for 'the most amount of people diving simultaneously'...

750+ divers line up to spell 'Koh Tao UWWF 2006. We were the F.

Sam sporting the head dress we found while doing the attempt and the remains of the umbrella we took down with us.

Partied my socks off at the Koh Tao underwater festival...

and spent a lot of time hanging in with Rachel, Jasper and new friends Jepper and Callum...

Eric...

and Dave...


However what I found myself doing mostly was staying in the Bungalow with Sam and either watching back to back episodes of LOST (damn that programme and damn that Sawyer! Why does he have to be so hot!) or hanging in the hammock and laughing at drunk people tripping over the seemingly invisible step on the road outside our porch.

Me in my happiest place in the world. A hammock looking out on Sairee beach, Koh Tao.

Those 3 weeks went far too quickly and soon it was time to get my travelling head and backpack on again. Sam had decided to come with me which was cool, but in true Hotel Koh Taofornia style we had a couple of false starts. The first was due to be me being distracted by a George Clooney look alike and the second was due to Sam getting food poisoning, but we finally made it off Koh Tao and the island cried when we left, (it pissed down).

Lookie-Likie no. 6 - George Clooney
(top right hand. Obviously not top left nor bottom!)

Our first stop was a little island in the most southerly part of Thailand called Koh Taratou. Apparently the most idilic of the Thai islands according to Dave in Bangkok, but a complete disaster area when it came to Sam and I. The most memorable moment of probably my whole year happened on this island. The farce of our four hour hike that turned into a twelve hour nightmare. It’s a pretty long story but worth a read. However if you can’t be bothered scroll down to the picture of Koh Lipe (the beautiful beach and the boats)

Me content and serene before the horror sets in from the 10 hour treck from hell.

Anyway, for those of you still with me Dave had said how no one visits this national park and how you can do all these amazing walks to natural lakes with waterfalls and skinny dip to your hearts desire without being disturbed. Something I've always wanted to do for as long as I can remember. So at 10 am Sam and I took off, all set for an 8 mile walk to this waterfall. Two hours and three 1.5 litre bottles of water later we finally came off the shadeless road and on to the trail where we were told by the only person we'd seen on our walk that it should take us only another 30 mins to the waterfall. Two and a half hours later after grappling mountain sized rocks, crossing and re-crossing the river, and hanging precariously from various flora and fauna we finally made it and I got my well earned skinny dip.

Look mum! No bikini!

That's not so bad I hear you cry, but the real saga begins on the way back. By this time it is now 3.30pm and we realised that we should start making a move if we were to make it back to camp before nightfall. Luckily the trip back to the main road was much quicker now we had become accomplished rock climbers so we did it in half the time. However just before we came to the end of the trail it started to rain like I've never seen it rain, and rain makes rocks realllly slippy. Luckily we escaped without much damage, but we were soaked to the skin, so rather than walk the 8 miles back to camp in the rain we decided to take a detour and head to the nearest restaurant (hut) for shelter.

The idea was to get them to radio the other side of the island where our camp was for a pick up (there are no telephones on the island). We did that and were assured that our request had been met. Two hours later we realised something was up and no one was coming. Despite continually being told that someone would be there soon it turned out that the radio signal was down because of the storm and they hadn't spoken to anyone. By now it was pitch black, we were both stripped down to our bikinis wearing borrowed jumpers and soaking wet trainers. The 'restaurant' owners were trying to convince us to stay in their accommodation, but we had a boat to catch the following morning and had already paid for our tents so we weren't playing ball. So at 8 p.m. we set off into the unknown for our 8 mile walk back to the camp.

A very wet and cold me, still fairly happy as unbenowing there was no car coming to pick us up.

Joke no. 1 was that a ranger who had been sitting with us all that time unbeknown to us said he would accompany us back. 'Safe' I thought, 'what a bit of luck', but no, it turned out that because WE had a torch we were leading HIM back. Great ranger! I was cold, tired and miserable. It was an up hill struggle all the way, and very very dark. I was on a mission to get home so I was walking so fast that I didn't notice the very large branch in the middle of the road until I almost stepped on it. When I looked again at the thing I faltered upon I realised that it was no branch but a huge PYTHON lying across the road with a girth as thick as my thigh. Now snakes don't normally bother me, but this mother was HUGE and the sight of it made me scream like a girlie. I went scuttling backwards to the ranger for safety thinking 'He'll know what to do', but (joke no. 2) he walked up to it and screamed something in Thai even more girlie than me. Nice one! After a few minutes when he finally composed himself he finally got the courage together to throw stones at it. 'Good move’ I thought, ‘ we're dead!', but luckily after a few crap shots the monster finally had enough of the abuse and slithered off into the woods. I swear it took 15 minutes before we couldn't hear it anymore. It was one big mean mother! I was much more cautious the rest of the walk home which we finally made by 10 p.m., 12 hours after we set off.

Koh Lipe.

The next day we packed our bags hurriedly and set off to Koh Lipe to check out the island that many of our friends in Thailand were keen to set up another dive shop on. We ended up having to camp again as it turned out to be another Thai holiday and all the accommodation was booked. It wouldn't have been a problem but we did get a bit pissed off with the various random drunken Thais that stumbled into our tent throughout the night. Here we also dived the famous 8 mile dive site where we saw 2 Leopard sharks mating, which was a truly amazing experience. However our crazy Italian dive leader f**ked it all up for us by going over and stroking them mid shag. Now I don't know about you, I don't mind a bit of voyeurism, but trying to instigate a cross species threesome is a bit much! Needless to say the Leopard sharks where having none of it and buggered off. Sam and I were not pleased. That night, however the dive leader redeemed himself by cooking homemade Pizzas in a self-made wood fire for everyone at the dive shop. I do love those Italians. Almost as good as Pappagone's but not quite ;)

Our pizza making dive leader and their very cool home made wood oven.

It was now time to leave Thailand and head to Malaysia. It was a sad time for me as I'd been in this country for 7 months now, but a speed boat journey later and we found ourselves in Langkawi an Island on the north west tip of Malaysia.

Here we had a trip on one of the highest cable cars I've ever been on.

Next, a road trip over Asia’s longest (and unfortnatley very unexciting) bridge we found ourselves in George Town where we Visited Asia’s biggest Buddhist temple....


After a couple of days here we went Jungle trekking in the Cameron Highlands (much to Sam’s disgust at making her hike again) to see the world’s largest Flower, Rafflesia, in bloom which can grow to be 3 feet across and weigh up to 15 pounds. It takes a year for it to bloom and is reported to smell of rotting meat, but luckily it didn’t to us....


Here we also went to visit a tea plantation and drunk the best tea I’ve had since Indian Chai and also munched a few scones. All very civilised....

Tea plantations at the Cameron Highlands, Malaysia.

Afternoon tea and Scones with Sam.

And met/hung out with these two nutters....

Lee and Patrick.

In Kuala Lumpar we met up with some cool people we’d met previously in Langkawi and Cameron Highlands and went see the world’s tallest freestanding towers, the Petronas Towers and the world’s 3rd tallest communications tower.

Petronas tower viewed from the communications tower.

Sam, Laura and me in the viewing level of the Petronas tower

The telecomunications tower, Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia.

All too quickly we left Malaysia and moved on to Singapore. Three days here wasn’t enough either but we certainly made the most of what time we had.

Singapore.

I really loved this city. I loved its blend of east meets west and its super cleanness was a joy after 6 months in Thailand, however it did seem a bit obsessive that chewing gum is banned here! It was also great to be back somewhere with a super clean and efficient transport system and in a city with an obsession with shopping. I really have never seen so many malls in my life! Beats America hands down!

Singapore Slings at Raffles hotel.

Here we drank Singapore Slings at it’s home of invention, the famous Raffles hotel. A great night out but a tad on the expensive side at $20 a pop, especially when you have 3 like we did (oops!). Watched a lazer light show at world’s biggest fountain, Went on a really cool night Safari at the Singapore zoo, and had an encounter with a pink dolphin at Sentosa Island....

Singapore's night Safari. I know, it's not a real elephant!

Me making an idiot of myself in front of an audience at Sentosa Islands' pink dophin show. I'll do anything to have encounter with rare marine life!

Finally it was time to pack Sam off back to chilly old England (a very sad affair) and I had to get my excitement in check for the most anticipated leg of my trip, Australia.

I managed to see more of that huge country in 6 weeks than most of my Australian friends had in their entire lives. It was a pretty full on experience! But now my dear friends, my year is sadly coming to an end. I’m now in New Zealand and as I only have 6 weeks left till my booked flight home I intend on bringing you my Australian adventure quicker than this last instalment, so look for me in your inbox again over the next couple of weeks…

See ya later mate!

xxxx