Part XIII

Friends, family, colleagues and droogs.

I am in Krabi. Been here for 4 days and its rained for a good portion of each of them. It's ok though cos I like rain and Krabi is cool. Got System of a Down cranked up at the moment too and its going off!

I have just walked up 1200 really steep steps to an awesome buddhist temple on top of a jungle clad limestone pillar. The first real good work out I've had in some time, harder than climbing Sibayah, pretty much straight up. I was cursing in annoyance by about the 900th step but grunted on up then ripped my shirt off and collapsed at the top for the next 5 minutes. The view at the top is absolutely incredible! Can see for miles in all directions, the coast, islands, limestone out crops all over the place, plantations, rice paddies and Krabi. Awesome. The sun even came out for the first time in days.

Being such a cool location I decided to do some gongs. I did Jen Jhi Dao Tai Kit Kuen for ages looking at the best grouping of limestone. Then ran through the Taiji form a few times and did it with surprisingly good coordination, very stable, then did Ba Duan Jin to top it all off and was feeling pretty damn incredible by the end of it all. I ran into a scottish yogi and a dutch desciple while going through my form. The scot got me to film him doing his yoga. They were dudes, older sinewy fullas like I'll be after a few years of qigong : ) Spend about 2 hours up there, alternating between gonging out and being a camera toting tourist lout. The rain came in and gradually obscured the surrounding scenery, then sprinted barefoot down the steps in the hope of beating the rain back to town. Just got on the bike when it absolutely p!ssed down so I chilled out for a while in a shrine. Ran into some poms on my way down who had walked in from the road and it had taken them 2 hours to get almost to the top only to get there just in time for the rain.

I've hired bikes 3 times since I got to thailand and got totally saturated every time. Went to Ao Nang yesterday, which is a beach nearby. Very touristy though, fancy restaurants and farang bars, not really my thing. It was raining heavily too, as soon as I got about a km from the place. The next beach downs pretty cool though, trees with buttress roots right on the beach and limestone islands just off shore with locals peddling dried fish and other traditional foods.

On the way back to Krabi I passed through a very cool limestone formation area so rode into a palm oil plantation thinking of doing some qigong. Perfect spot, surrounded by young palm trees encircled by forest covered limestone cliffs, awesome... except this large swarm of mozzies enveloped me as soon as I got there and as I'd left my repellent behind, had to exit the scene pronto.

Ran into a young canadian fulla on the first night here, good sort, so we got on the p1ss at the funky monkey bar. It had a wicked wooden sculpture of a chopper outside and stubby coolers (beer jackets). We had a ladyboy bar "maid" in a skimpy red dress. Was entertaining. He (the canadian) is on his way to NZ. Ran into an old pom living over here the next night who reckoned he'd seen a kebab shop down by the bangkok bank. Yum, had me hanging out for Kebab. Can't find the place though. Gutting! Need to open a worm hole and move Abrakebabra over here. I love thai food, but not for every meal every day. Get used to such a variety of culinary delights living in cosmopolitan cities such as Welly. Laksa from Satay Kingdom... Mixed veg kebas.. good fish n chips...

Got a cool guest house here, huge room with window, decent restaurant and in house internet cafe. Got a nice little stash of sounds hidden on the hard drive.. Only 100 baht or $4.12 NZD and it's run by a family of really hot thai chicks too : )

Been watching a bit of football as the world cup is on everywhere here in the evening. Still can't get excited about it though. Sit through 90 mins to see maybe 2 goals and a bunch of men rolling around in the grass in orgiastic delight! Well.. the Swiss did a couple of nights back.

That's about it from here.