Thailand was always gonna be the longest blog by far and it is. But have faith, stick with it, its all funny and worth the read! 

Thailand was always gonna be the Party leg of our trip!! Its sole purpose was white sandy beaches, shed loads of booze and lots of women (for me not Chami the nun)! Without jumping the gun it’s safe to say it provided all these things and more, so don’t expect too much on temples and s*** in this blog.

The first island we headed for was Koh Phan Ngan and the infamous full moon party. When we got there I realised heaven was a place on Earth. I’m deadly serious to all the guys out there, this place is paradise! Nowhere else on earth is there such a concentration of fit girls our age, all topless and basking on the beach. We literally couldn’t believe it, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. It puts anywhere in Europe to shame, take the best boys holiday resort you’ve ever been to and times it by ten, you wont even scratch the surface!

To recap our group now consisted of me and Cham, Zig, Chami’s old housemate from Ealing Tim (and the legendary film maker (U-Tube vid)) and a Kiwi called Matt that Zig had met coming down to the island on the Bus. However on the first night it was just me Zig and Matt. Charlie and Tim were staying on a different part of the island. We went out and proceeded to drink buckets of our old friend Sangsom. Sangsom is a Thai whiskey which we think has amphetamines in it, or something, cos basically every time you drink it you get mashed and go crazy!! We went and hit the beach bars to see what they had to offer. Basically the old dancing legs came out to play, it was one of those crazy ones. Me and Zig dominated and ended up out till the next morning. We were both cutting some shapes on the dance floor with the ladies!

The next day Chami was out and about so everyone went out and got completely bladdered again. We also met up with some of the Swedish girls we’d traveled China with. We all hit the buckets, for those who don’t know; on the Thai islands they sell you a little bucket with a can of coke, 30cl bottle of spirit, and some ice…..that’s it! And we all drank loads of them. You can imagine the consequences particularly on a light weight like me! Chami was getting out the old “wave the arm in the air” dance so you know he’s gone. Everyone danced until sunrise then we went down the beach, collapsed, and then back to the bungalows. I think we were there four days before the full moon party, and we went out every night, getting smashed and chasing women (Chami exempt). Then spent the day lying on the beach laughing about the night before and just admiring the scenery!!!

The Full Moon party was one of the most hard core sessions I've ever had. Those who have watched the video of us at Full Moon will know that I tried desperately to get Chami out on the tiles. He had been ill for two days so wasn’t up for it at all. But I still think he should have just overdosed on immodium and come out. It was about 9pm and I got that feeling of 'boys on tour.....lets f***ing dominate'. So I decided that this was to be a topless night, and I'd indulge in the luminous body paint that they sell on the beach. Ziggy followed suit so off we trotted to get painted up. I was trying to think of a funny line for the ladies, so we came up with putting 'your name' on our backs. The idea being we could go up to them and say 'I bet a dance....a kiss....whatever...that I have got your name written across my back'. I know I know....its legendary that’s what you’re all thinking....yeah right! You'll be safe to know it only served to get laughs not action, but in my defense I think I only managed to deliver the line about 5 times before I was a dribbling pig who could barely stand! Tim was a legend as well and hit the buckets hard straight off, he even let me paint his face in my pissed state, which is quite impressive considering the state I was in, though I don’t think he had much choice in the matter. The full moon is a difficult one for me to describe or recount as we were all so drunk. But basically the whole stretch of beach is packed with 20 or 30 thousand people, all drunk and going crazy in the bars that spill onto the beach. Everyone’s drinking buckets and hitting it really hard. Now there lies some people’s problem. On full moon they hit it so hard straight off that they are never gonna make the sunrise, which is tradition and everyone’s goal! I nearly fell into that category and spent about an hour sat in the sea, holding my head in my hands dribbling.....you've all seen me do this before. Luckily I was brought out of my coma by some random Thai piker, putting his hand in my pocket, I guess trying to rob the stupid pissed tourists. Unfortunately for him I wasn't pissed enough not to notice, so my eyes opened and I politely told him to remove his hand from my pocket.....yeah right! Anyway he ran off, and I suddenly remembered where I was a dragged my ass back into the bars looking for Zig and the guys. Whenever we were drinking on this island we tended to loose each other? Then all of a sudden you'd wander into a different bar to find me or Zig pole dancing on stage or something! So it didn’t take for ever to find someone. I forgot to mention exactly why I went and sat on the beach for an hour.

As I was in such a happy, “lets dominate” type of mood. I'd been chatting to everyone, guys, girls, big groups, everyone. And I'd met this one big group of Canadian guys in a bar, with a length of hose pipe and funnel downing beers. I'd been stood there throwing my arms around them pissed as a fart, which they thought was hysterical. Then I'd gone and said “let me down one”, but all I had was a freshly purchased bucket of Sangsom. But in my invincible state, I'd said to them f*** it....I’ll down a bucket. They'd proceeded to pour an entire bucket of sticky black Sangsom down the hose and into my gullet!! Miraculously I managed to down it…… I GOT AN APPLAUSE! The Centurion all over again. But soon followed about an hour on the beach, I can’t, and will never remember.

Ziggy was flitting between birds like a bee flying between flowers, followed closely by our drinking partner Matt. By the way, if you ever wanna get smashed, go drinking with a kiwi. I don’t know if they are all like him, but instead of having a little devil on your shoulder telling you to do crazy s***....we had Matt stood in front of us going “Come on you crazy pomme.....lets get another seven buckets.....were not here to f*** spiders you know” (apparently that was some crazy kiwi saying by the way)? I think for a bit we all regrouped again around 5ish and continued to maintain our intoxicated state! I think I can remember a lot of pissed dance moves and me trying to kiss everyone, including a huge Samoan drug dealer who was trying to sell me drugs!!! Not a good idea but he was flattered. I bumped into a Dutch girl I’d pulled in Laos and after some dancing she disappeared and then I saw her on the beach with two other girls all snogging each other!!! Free love baby.....save the trees and all that!! I tried to get involved in that action to no avail! But I think me and a group of guys just stood there in the end watching one of the sexiest things we'd ever seen! The Dutch...you’ve gotta love em those crazy pancake eating b******s!

To conclude on the full moon we danced until sunrise, in some Sangsom trance. Zig and Matt bumped into me around 8 or 9 dancing outside one of the bars on my own, throwing some crazy shapes. They greeted me by jumping on me I think. I headed back around 9 or 10? Zig takes the prize for last man back though. We went to find him around 12 or 1 the next day and as we walked down the beach we saw him walking towards us. He'd been sleeping on the beach in the process baking himself in the sun. He also must have had a run in with my sticky fingered friend as his mob had disappeared. You can imagine what we all looked like as we headed into the town, all in the same pair of shorts and smeared body paint from the night before, after a couple of hours of sleep, Zig covered in sand, hair all over the shot and feeling like death after countless buckets of alcohol! But we just sat laughing about the night before for hours!

After the full moon we felt we had conquered that island so headed for pastures new on Koh Tao. We decided to sign up for a diving course as you got free accommodation and plus its what everyone does on Koh Tao. We checked into this awesome dive complex called Bans, and that was home for the next 10 days! We ended up staying in the resorts massage parlour as they were out of rooms. I think we've got a picture but this room was basically a cave with a boulder amongst other things in it! It was wicked though we all felt like Batman! This place had its own bar that spilled onto the beach and was one of the social highlights of the island, which was great as everyone headed for it! We started our diving course and proceeded to become qualified divers! Diving is amazing, really good fun and the stuff you see just blows you away. It is a weird sensation breathing underwater, but we all thought it was great. I think Charlie was with us for 4 days before he headed off to Bangkok to pick up his girlfriend Nat. She had flown out for a week so they were scooting back over to Koh Phan Ngan for a filthy holiday in a plush resort. As I wasn’t there I will hand you over to him for a second so he can tell you what he got up to?

I left the boys the morning after a particularly heavy one… 14 hours later I was in Bangkok airport waiting for Nat’s connection to come in from Dubai… I am going to avoid being too mushy but I was dying to see her and it was fantastic when she finally walked through the arrivals gate!! We were staying in a really nice resort in Koh Phan Ngan… for me it was actually brilliant to be in some nice air-conditioned accommodation for a change!!! The resort was quality… we had a nice pool and our own private stretch of beach which never had more than 10 people on it…. Our villa was about 10 meters from the beach and we had chairs and a hammock on the veranda which was great because we were on the sunset side of the island and the view was great!!!! The five days in the resort was great and a welcome change of pace compared to the previous three months!!! On our final night we went to a rooftop restaurant which was flat on the top of a five star hotel and 70 floors up the view over Bangkok was amazing and it was a great way to finish off the week!!!! After a sad goodbye I then made arrangement to travel back down south to hook up with Pete!!!

Basically the evenings on Koh Tao were very chilled, just sitting on the beach watching the fire shows and having a drink till 1-2ish. I even had a go at that.....yes I was pissed when I volunteered. Got some wicked pics of me spitting fire. I did it twice and accidentally drank the paraffin once....what a dick! I only had second degree burns on my hands so don’t worry mum. There are two particular nights worth mentioning on Koh Tao. The first was Chami's last night before he went off to see Nat. We got really drunk, as per usual, and then one of the girls we were with said something about me taking my clothes off. Not one to be asked twice when I am pissed, in a flash I found myself stood on the beach in front of the entire bar in my birthday suit!! Then being the affectionate man I am I thought it would be a good idea to give Chami a hug. Chami disagreed and proceeded to thrust his bottle of beer into my forehead, so now I am sporting a lovely little scar above my left eyebrow. You know you've got good friends when they bottle you ay??? I then went skinny dipping and found Zig already one step ahead of me, but with one of the Swedes from our dive team! Filthy boy. There is a lovely pic of him in her mini skirt as he didn’t want to walk back up the beach naked as someone (Matt) had nicked his clothes. I on the other hand just strowled back up the beach but naked....what a prat!

The other night worth mentioning was the Koh Tao Underwater Festival. Basically this is a once a year party for a whole weekend in honour of the sea and its little creatures, as the islands whole economy is dependent on diving. We went down to the cove they were having it in with a group of about ten. They had put up a massive stage and there were loads of stalls selling booze and all kinds of food, a massive fire show etc. I instantly got that feeling that this place was gonna produce a special night, and before long we were all tucking into our buckets of Sangsom and the old dancing legs were hinting of a potential championship performance. The bands they had playing on stage where all Reggae, so it was a proper tropical island atmosphere. That is the thing with the Full Moon. It was aimed at ravers and only dance music. I like something with a bit more rhythm so the music I was now facing was like curry to a pisshead. We all went off on one and started throwing the craziest shapes you’ve ever seen. This is where the story focuses on ZIG! During the night we had figured it was quite easy to get up on stage with the band and dance, loads of people where doing it. Now it was about 02:30am and I was busy thrilling the masses with my swinging hip movements…..when I saw someone run across the stage behind the band and jump of it, but not into the crowd as you might expect, but into the scaffolding that was holding up a massive speaker at the side of the stage. I thought to myself “what a prat…..that’s gonna hurt in the morning’! After about another ten minutes of dancing, some of the people I was with came running up to me saying “Oh my god, Zig has been taken to hospital cos he’s cut himself by jumping off the stage”. I then thought “YOU f***ING PRAT” and went running off to find him. Long story short (as this is already the longest blog in the world)….Zig ended up getting stitched up, then sent to Koh Samui for another clean up operation, before being flown home by his insurance company! As you all know now he is fine, I would go into more details of this event accept for the sake of his embarrassment I wont! Get me drunk when I’m back and I’ll tell you everything!

We spent the remainder of our time on the island playing football on the beach, diving, the usual stuff. I had already lost Zig to Sangsom, now Matt left as he was flying back home, so I spent my last day with the Swedes (who we miss) before heading off to the West Coast and Railey Beach.

This place was beautiful, it has massive limestone cliffs jutting out lining the beach. I forgot to mention that Koh Tao was really stunning too, see the photos. As I was on my own I sorted out a bungalow and went off to book up some climbing. Railey and the neighbouring Tonsoi beach are a Mecca for climbers. They come from all over the world to scale the cliffs. So I figured it would be a good way to mingle, as well as a wicked thing to do. However the next day when I did it, it turned out to just be me and my crazy Thai instructor. I did 3 or 4 climbs which were bloody hard. If you ever want a proper work out go climbing, they are all stacked! My instructor was a Thai Rasta, they all were. But still you can imagine what was going through my head when I’m half way up a cliff, I look down to see the guy holding the other end of my rope with the biggest spliff you’ve ever seen in his mouth. I tell you what though, that’s part of travelling, in normal circumstances that would be terrible and you would go mad, but you just learn to laugh at nearly all these crazy things that happen. He must have smoked about ten during the course of our day! I was only there a couple of nights, one of which was Valentines night. So I’m sat there feeling sorry for myself as I had no one to share it with, looking out to sea in some beach bar. When I spotted this lonely maiden, I sacked up and ended up going over and talking to her, she was Russian and didn’t speak masses of English but I ended up spending the rest of the evening partying with her in the bar which was cool. The next day I met up with some guys I’d travelled with before in Railey, and we decided to head over to Phuket.

So off we headed to another beach destination. I’ll keep Phuket brief; it was wicked to be with the other group of guys, but the place sucked. Phuket does have some wicked beaches and diving. But it’s full of old miserable English b******s on package holidays. Unfortunately it served as a reminder of some of the pikey monkeys you get in our country. I had a couple of run-ins with them which put me right off Phuket. It was also really expensive in comparison to what I’d been used to, so I quickly made the decision to ditch it and head to Koh Phi Phi.

Charlie’s love getaway had ended now so he was back with me which was cool. Koh Phi Phi is probably the most famous of the Thai islands, it’s the one that they filmed ‘The Beach’ on. So when I got there I was all excited but in all honesty I wasn’t that impressed with the town on the island or the two main beaches. A lot of the things that now let it down are because it still hasn’t recovered from the Tsunami. There are still piles of rubbish here and there, and collapsed buildings and stuff, and just loads of building sites. The place was rammed though so don’t worry there are plenty of tourists still coming here. That again let the beach down a bit in comparison to our other Thai island experiences. However the strongest asset of Koh Phi Phi is the places on the island you can’t get to from the central town. To give you an idea of its geography. Koh Phi Phi is made up of two mountains with a long thin strip of land connecting them. It would look a bit like a big ‘H’ from the sky. All the best bits are on the other sides of the mountains that you have to get a boat to. We did a tour of the sites and it was amazing. But that’s jumping the gun a bit.

There was now 4 of us, me and Charlie and two guys we’d travelled with before, Rich who you know and a new one called Dan. They are top boys so on our first night we thought we’d get on it! We went to this bar with a live band and slowly started putting them away. There was a fire show and all the usual stuff, it was a really good bar. Then they announced a game of musical chairs. Now this was the point of the night when I knew if we played it things were gonna get messy, so I though let’s get involved. Me and Dan volunteered. Lucky he did cos I was the second person to go out. It was so funny playing it and seeing people play it after all those years. After a few had gone out Dan was still in and they started adding tasks. So every time the music stopped the contestants had to run into the audience and get something. It varied from a straw to a bra etc. Dan started doing really well and it got down to the last few to our rapturous cheering. Then the guy called for them to get a condom, I was screaming at Dan “come here I’ve got one” and frantically trying to get my wallet out. He came running over but soon the other contestants started returning until there was only one chair left. That left Dan and this other girl to fight for it. The problem was the zip pocket in my wallet I keep them in was stuck so I’m stood there with him screaming at me, desperately trying to open it, when finally it opens. He is in such a panic to get one so he can run back, he just grabs the first thing he see’s and runs, but he’d grabbed some sea sickness tablets instead. I ran after him screaming and switched it with an actual condom and the two of them ran back and destroyed the plastic chair by jumping to get on it. Luckily after ‘Hawkeye’ had been consulted the chair was awarded to Dan, who went into the Grand finale. I’d of loved to see his face when the Judge walked round to check peoples condoms to find him waving some sea sickness tablets, they’d of ruined him. Also what I didn’t know was the only reason that he’d won was because the other woman was trying to get a condom off of Rich, who was just watching me stumbling over mine, stalling until he saw Dan run. The final item called was a pair of Boxer shorts, now this is where it gets classic! I have never seen a faster de-pantsing than when that call went out. Chami had his pants round his ankles and stood there waving them at Dan with the beast out on full display! It was hysterical. He was so good and quick in his undressing that both of the remaining contestants, Dan and this Aussie girl had run straight for him. She obviously didn’t know Dan was our mate, so she was never gonna get em. Or maybe she was just mesmerized by the beast and ran for that instead??? We ended up getting free bottles of Vodka as our prize…you guessed it, we got smashed. We were all dancing on the beach till they actually had to chuck us out. The only person left in the bar was a guy sweeping the floor!

The next morning we’d booked to go on a tour of the sites at 08:00am……Ahhhhhhhh! So after no sleep we were up to go snorkeling and what not! As you can imagine we were not in great shape. Chami actually puked whilst bobbing up and down snorkeling! We did see all the pristine white sand beaches though. One had wild monkeys on it in the palms. We saw ‘The Beach’ which is actually called Maya beach. This place would be one of the most stunning places in the world, accept for the fact that it now resembles Disney land with about a million people crowded onto it. You can hardly see the waters edge for the speed boats moored up on it, and barely find a spot to lie down. Apart from Maya all the other beaches we saw were stunning spots, it is well worth a visit.

The next day we went diving and had two of our best dives yet. The visibility was great and we finally saw a shark!!! It was really good fun. We then headed off to our final island Koh Lanta. However as we’d been on such benders I think it had all got the better of me, I got really ill and spent two days feeling as weak as s***. I was puking and ate nothing for 2 days. As you can imagine my experience of Koh Lanta was limited. That didn’t really matter as Lanta is the quietest of the islands but very pretty with the longest beach you’ve ever seen! The couple of Days we were there we just chilled on the beach and had a relaxing time in the evenings with the group we’d been travelling with. Chami really liked the island and saw more of the beach than me. Its not a party island though, lucky for me. We left our group of travel companions and headed off to Malaysia on our last day. That draws an end to the party leg of our trip. For those still reading thankyou for your faith and well done you made it!