david's trials & tribulations of life

AH, the days when all I had to worry about was where to lay my sarong on the long idyllic beach are long gone. A lifetime away it seems. I look at my pictures of Thailand and Laos and wonder who that tanned indigenous skinny person in the photo is… (just in case you get any funny ideas, I have NOT suddenly become fat! The difference is I am now back to my jaundice pastey self and looking over a bleak rainy English landscape). It was hard to come back to reality, but then again, when the ‘reality’ involves watching World Cup football from bed every morning things could be worse. And they did get worse, as I spent endless days doing nothing apart from writing cover letters and sending CVs in another depressing effort at finding a job in the real world. But for a while things looked rosy, as I actually spent a relatively long extended period of time (a month or so) with a person of the opposite sex. I had met her at Dan and Jess’ wedding shortly after getting back from SE Asia. It was nic...

Where did I leave off last time then? Ah yes, I was on the verge of leaving (and insanity no doubt) to the depths of Thailand’s jungle: Khao Yai National Park. A huge tract of untouched, pristine, wild undulating rainforest in the Isaan Province, where more than 100 wild elephants, average of 1 million tourists per year (mostly Thai) and an insurmountable number of terrestritigers, gibbons, macaques, hornbills, samba deer, and the buffalo roam. (no, I do not work for the Thai National Park Service.... yet... and I just HAD to add the last one in too!). That plus an al blood-sucking leeches! Freaky things (the leeches, but to a lesser extent, the Thais). I had to wear ridiculous looking white canvas leech socks - more like gaiters -(these could be the final touch to my eccentric travel wear of baby howler monkey from Costa Rica as scarf, spider monkey juveniles from Mexico as moon boots, and Thai leech socks! Hhhmmm, would be a little naked though.... will have to revise my new line of ...

It was a 3 day/3 night live-aboard dive trip. The night before going out on the boat, I was inquiring as to when the last whale shark or manta ray was seen. They had been spotted occasionally over the last few weeks, but I met three dive masters that had something like 900 to 1100 logged dives who had NEVER seen whale sharks. So it would be a long shot for little ole' me with my 11 - yes, a piddly eleven - logged dives to see the great almighty whale shark... the pinnacle of diving. Well....FIRST DIVE OF THE TRIP!!! My 12th dive ever! Oh, yes. I almost shat my pants. Well, wasn't wearing any...OK, in my wetsuit! It was an outer worldly experience. I saw them four times, on two separate dives, and even got to within 3 or so meters of it (snorkelling too!)! SO HUGE!! And it was only a baby, measuring in at around 5 or 6 meters! I feel blessed. The next three days were spent cruising around Koh Surin Nua and Nai near the Burma Banks, seeing s ome beautiful and pristine coral slope...

If someone were to be unemployed for four months, give or take a couple of weeks, and did not see a job materializing in the distant future, what would you expect him to do? Set off to faraway Thailand of course! That someone in this pertinent case is me. Yes, a bit of a whimsical decision. But trust me, I had VERY good reasons to shed half a grand (pound sterlings unfortunately, not rubels...) on flights, and the added extras. All will be revealed. I had interviewed with Wildscreen in BRistol two days before flying, and had a return ticket for a month later, on the off chance that I was actually accepted for the position. Now, it doesn't take a degree in metaphysical psychological neuropathy (?!) to work out that I did NOT get the job, and I DID extend my stay in Thailand, hence why I am writing from some tropical island in the Gulf of Thailand two months since I left the saturated sinking island that is Britain. You are asking yourself WHY Thailand, and what are those VERY good r...

When someone says to you "Venezuela" what pops up into your mind instantly? Tricky one really eh? (well unless you are FROM Venezuela!) I would have said oil, Angel Falls, and a dodgy president a couple of weeks ago. But oh no, no, no. Now I think; gorgeous women, bad roads, a nationwide facial twitch (which manifests itself when I would ask a question such as where are the toilets, and would lend me to believe that they are about to chop my head off with a machete...), gorgeous women (oh, did I already mention them? Well just to reiterate the point), great wide open spaces, lots of wildlife, and still a dodgy president. The latter was a point of contention recently, as two opposing protests occurred the morning we were leaving Caracas for the Llanos. Our driver imparted some words of wisdom: "Si. Va ser el empieze de LA guerra." (Yes, this is the beginning of THE war!) Great. Well, luckily we were on the road out of Caracas to the vast floodplain of the Orinoco Riv...