Tanks and mobs for Songkran Festival, I can only afford to eat some vegetable – Water-fights and late late nights.... Trying to change my VISA makes me very displeased... yeah.

Well my saga continues as any saga does. The last week saw some action in many ways, where to begin escapes me at the moment. You'll probably have to excuse some of my bizarre rambling as I make the effort to recollect everything into something which might resemble cohesion.

 
 

I'm just trying to remember when the last time I posted was; I think it was an insane rant when I was sat in the coffee shop after hitting an all time low of hunger, tiredness and depression spawned from the last few weeks of poverty and exhaustion.

 
 

Everyone who knows me knows that I can be a complacent and lazy bugger, but that's not so at the moment, I have been working like a mofo to try and get myself back on track, and I think that it all just culminated into on big toll-taking climax where I just got ill, I wasn't sleeping more than 4 hours a night. The truth is that it's just been a really poor time for jobs at the moment and I guess that out of all the jobs I apply for I seem to only get an answer at a rate of 5% - when I do it builds you up, when you don't it kicks you down. Anyway, not to go on, in short I have received six offers now, unfortunately it's still a matter of waiting a little, I am going to have a look at some schools next week and have some meetings, and I will take one of them even if it means moving out of Bangkok. I would love to have the chance to stay in this city for another year before I work in one of the other districts (hopefully by the beach or in some mountain heaven. But for now, I would love the opportunity to stay - we will see.

 
 

So, aside from the jobs then this place has been pretty eventful recently - you will no doubt of heard in the news and from my previous updates that the political situation here in Thailand has been pretty sketchy again. Basically, Thaksin who is presumed hiding in Cambodia was sending satellite transmitions every night trying to insight mass protest and demonstration. This worked, and sparked widespread protesting which was all a bit crazy and weird, each night the movements getting bigger and a bit less controlled. This culminated in the Songkran Festival (the Thai new-year) where there was also the 14th ASEAN summit was being held in the town of Pattaya in the province of Chonburi. Everything kicked off, the security wasn't very well prepared, the red (UDD) protesters broke through and all the Asian leaders had to be choppered out. As a result (another) National Emergency was declared - for 6 hours - and a curfew put in place. So a good start for the Festival, most of the city closed down and everyone was given an extra day's holiday to try and calm things down.

 
 

That night I was invited by my good friend Guy who works for A.I.A. And has been looking after me a lot, for which i am forever thankful. We met up with some of his friends and went to a really nice night-club called 'Snop' Entrance was free, I got to know his friends who he had known since he was 10 years old, the all have different lines of work from TV production to import and exports (for the famous Blue Elephant Thai restaurant chain),we danced, we drank a lot of whisky and danced - I needed this kind of release after the week I had!

 
 

I woke up in the morning to the sound of gunshots, there were tanks and military on the end of my street and there was a large group of reds protesting and marching and kind of being leery and destructive. They took over the shopping mall next to where I live, and the first day of Songkran was kind of marred by that. I didn't go far, I just sat out on the street with a few older guys from Canada and Holland whom I know - we drank and I forgot to eat, by about midnight I was pretty drunk and wet through covered in white scented powder - the done thing for this festival. It is actually great to see all this going on everyone is generally in good spirits (no one in my area are particularly intense in their political displays and it was all good. People driving in the streets with 4x4's with bins full of water drenching everyone - it is basically a country-wide water pistol warfare! It was all good and we kept it low key.

 
 

When I woke up the next day I couldn't use the internet as the mall was still closed, but political pressure in my area seemed to have vanished. I stayed in most of the day until I had a missed call from an old friend Tukta. She invited me to go to Kao San Road (the backpacker's mad lands) to party it up. I wanted to go, but no money - she paid for everything - my taxi, gave me spending money and even paid for me to stay in a hotel room. If the day before was water fun but relaxed - this place was absolutely mad! There was a full on carnival atmosphere and everyone was having a good time. We drank and danced a lot! For two days, in good humour and I met some pretty crazy people as you do. I have never been so wet for so long in my life! It is completely crazy, and in hindsight I am actually pretty pleased I went - even though it has knocked me for six! But, at least I really got a taste of the festival. Or more like a smack in the face! I can't even remember the amount of random conversations I had, I do remember having to calm a few situations down when people were getting a bit drunk which I think could have actually gotten a bit ugly! In the end though all was good though. One of Tukta's friends had her 7 year old boy with her, and I think it was a bit too much for him (even though there was a strange mix of kids and really pissed people), he had a broken arm and was all wrapped up in plastic, so I decided to make myself responsible guardian and I just kept getting him water for his gun and helping him takeout some dudes with good precision - I think I became a target at that point for buckets of water and headshots galore! It's all in good fun, and it was nice to see everyone having a good time without things getting out of hand.

 
 

I don't even know what time it was when I went to bed, it must have been getting on for 10am, my phone was wet, and I was soggy! I woke up at some time in the evening, I think it was getting dark, I wandered out to see most of the people I was partying with the night before outside this grimy little hotel where everyone had stayed. I had a whisky breakfast and managed to drink and party for about another six hours before I just couldn't take it any longer. I staggered myself into a taxi and went home - game over!

 
 

Today I woke up with more dry death than a packet of beef jerky. I drank water and went to the internet to catch up with life as it should be. I have some weird snotty nose which produces mucus like I have never seen before! No more details about that I think!

 

I realised that I needed to change my VISA tomorrow, so I started trying to make a plan to get myself there (Again with the last minute madness). After a while of worry and stress and being angry with myself for just going and getting drunk all through the festival (to be fair - everyone was doing that, so it would have been difficult to escape unless I just stayed in my room for 4 days). I eventually put out the distress calls with great reluctance and luckily for me there are some of the most caring people on my side here, and I met up with a friend of mine from work Karitha who was sent to save me under instruction by another friend of mine - Pum. Pum has been a great friend (so has Karitha), but I have spent a lot of time talking with Pum and we have been taking care of each other through various problems. We will meet and go for food after work and cheer each other up. She has been offering to help me out with some money for ages, but I really didn't want to ask until it all came out today, and I felt terrible. Within 10 minutes Karitha had called me and was on her way to buy me dinner and lend me the money I need to change my VISA (Hopefully this is the last time!!!) So I have just come back from dinner and some beers, I met Karitha and my friend Guy - it was really nice to introduce them because they are both dear friends but also quite different, but they got on really well and we had a really nice conversation.

 
 

So, before I go on my quest back to the post-modern Eastern-Western location which is the Thai-Cambodian border for my VISA run, I just thought I would use the wee hours of the morning to make this update ready to send tomorrow when I come back feeling pretty bedraggled. Actually I'm going to try and steal as much free food from the evil buffet as I can from the border. We will see, I might just try to eat it all and see how much foot I can cram inside me in three hours before I leave. Let's hope that all works out okay. I haven't had money on my phone so I couldn't book my place on the coach, but I am chancing it like I did last time for the fact that there is going to be a little space for me on the bus!

 
 

 
 

Things that have made my life more than bearable in these last couple of months:

 
 

• Friends (not the tv series) but the magnificent people around me who have kept me in good spirits.
  

 
 

• Adam and Joe podcasts from their award winning BBC Radio 6 Music show - if you haven't checked these guys out then you have to have done!
  

 
 

http://rubapedia.pbwiki.com/ --> Check out the entire back catalogue of everything that these guys have done from radio to TV.

 
 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/adamandjoe/ --> This one is of course the BBC site for their recent work. Every Saturday morning from 9am-12pm (Download the podcast for nutritional content).

 
 

http://community.livejournal.com/adam_and_joe/ --> Errr... I can't remember what is on this one – oh yeah its a dedicated unofficial fan-site..

 
 

There is also Adam Buxton's blog which is a great source of all things film and creative with links to lots of different things. http://www.adam-buxton.com

 
 

[All worth checking out if you have the time to get into it!]

 
 

• Getting all of my computer programmes to sync up for ultimate computer efficiency. Have you ever gotten to the point where you can connect your Gmail to your Outlook and then your outlook to your OneNote (man, OneNote is good!) and the OneNote with the MS Word and Blogspot and Blogspot with something called Picasar 3 (for the picture/movie/audio uploads). It's the first time I have ever I have had all this time on my hands and I feel like a weirdo for spending an obscene amount of time to get all this software to work together. I feel good and ready to continue this blog-a-thon with continued vigour after a prolonged period out.
  

   
   

• Eating fruit.
  
• Eating Suki-Yaki
  
• Eating Pee O's legendary Thai vegetable and pork soup.
  
• 2 Litres of 'Ultra Violet, Reverse Osmosis' water for 1Baht.
  

   
   

Also check out these sites for the low-down on some of the best things in UK film.

 
 

• http://www.ultraculture.co.uk/ - a good UK film blog with reliable reviews and all sorts of good commentary.
  
• http://www.humanfilm.co.uk/ - Our friend Isabelle Stead and her wonderful team of filmmakers and producers who are all working very hard to do some fantastic things. Check it out and support the causes.