Tuesday 21 January 2014

21st January - once more into my breeches!!

strange things are a foot.

The last few days I have been sat staring at my laptop screen, my toe still swollen, numb and floppy from the stubbing that occurred just after I arrived here in New Zealand, drawing up plans for the return leg of my journey as well as attempting to write a small article based on some of my travel experiences, sort out some of the many photo's taken over the last few months and give some thought as to what the heal I'm going to do on a personal level when I finally return to the UK. It's kind of an open book scenario at the moment, a aged book with tired bindings but one that's waiting patiently for the story to be written upon it. At some point I'll nail it.

On the afternoon of the 29th of January I will begin my journey back to Thailand, stopping for a single night in Sydney, Australia before carrying on back to Bangkok where I will hopefully arrive at 0:55 on the 31st January. I then plan to then spend 2 nights in the capital before heading off on a 12 hour train ride to Chiang Mai in the north of the country, an area I missed out on my previous run. There I will take the time to indulge myself a bit of future planning, drink lots of coffee and once again sample lots of the fantastic cuisine for which the country is rightfully renowned. I may even finally get around to throwing myself off a ledge with a bungee chord attached to my ankles, as long as they promise to fix the other end to something secure. At least I know that I don't have anyone with a weighty life insurance policy on me hoping for a large payout upon my ultimate demise.

It's maybe difficult to convey just how much I have missed Asia since I left there, the friendly nature of the people, the natural beauty of the places and of course, the food. You may notice I did not include the heat and the mosquito's in that list, but it's a pleasure / pain thing you see. Besides, this time I'm going to be packing the strongest mosquito repellent I can possibly lay may hands on, or failing that the one with the wittiest name. So far the best I've found is "mosquitno".

So I'm entering Bangkok right when the current political protests are likely to be at their most virulent and disruptive. On the surface this trip may seem foolhardy at best but monitoring the situation from afar, it's not something about which I'm unduly concerned about although this may be subject to change as I get nearer the time. This will now be my 3rd visit to the City of Angels which hopefully will give me the experience and insight I need to move around as I would like for the initial short period that I'm there.

Time will tell I guess as it always does. I'm still ponderous as to why I haven't met anyone in Bangkok yet who is actually called Angel,  and also as to why I was seemingly unable to work "metatarsal" into my first paragraph.





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