Hello everyone ive been in thailand for almost a week now so lots to update you on!

Going to do a timeline type blog today... Visited Bangkok for the day which looks very promising for a good time after we head back up north! The shopping there is quality and th food always affordable and very good quality. Experienced a fair few attempted cons during the day - tuktuk drivers who promise to show you the city for a very cheap price which sounds ok until they drive to the outskirts of th city and then charge you a huge fare to take you back. seb was on th case before we left so he spotted the pattern when we were offered the 'local tour'. we stopped at a bar on kosan road and met these two very very friendly local thai girls who seb took a liking to. they then started ordering expensive drinks on his behalf and try to charm you into paying- turned out they were actually working for th bar.apart from that though it has a lot of character and im lookng forward to spending some money there.

so we got the overnight train down to surat thani and then a 3 hour boat trip to koh phangan. since arriving at horizon weve been training every available session until this morning and to be honest the rest is very welcome. training has been good but not too rough yet since we're still honing th new technique and trying to unlearn our previous styles, so not too much sparring yet. found out yesterday ekk (owner and trainer) is organising all 3 of us fights at the end of the month so training will be getting intense!

the beaches here are perfect, surprisingly a big improvement on goa which is quite impressive... the water is perfectly flat for a mile out to sea so swimming is very relaxing and especially good after training to sooth the old back. spending a lot of time at bar called eden just over the hill and have met some great characters including a burmese guy called chicken who talks to geckos and is quite possibly the most positive person i have ever met. another character worthy of mention is benjamin a german actor who personally knows daniel bruhl!! this might not mean much to lots of you but i was hugely impressed and excited! also, yesterday two new girls arrived who went to hills road and are in our year! theyve done our trip backwards so have been recommending us all th good stuff to do in cambodia vietnam and china which sound amazing.

time is money so i will leave it here for a short while.

hope you are all well!

harry