JT's Diary for April

He said he would never do it, but at last Mike Williams (science teacher, football top goal scorer and closet crooner) has created his own homepage with details of what he gets up to in his spare time. Good one Mike!

Hey, hey, hey .... School's out for Easter!! I still needed to go in though to catch up with a bit of a back-log in my in-tray. Also went to have a look at a couple of possible appartments for next year with Khun Oi. In one appartment block the penthouse was unoccupied so we asked for a look just out of curiosity. Wow ... what a huge, fancy place... I'd love to live there. Think need to marry someone very rich... I'll make a note in my diary to work on it tomorrow!

L'Internet est merveilleux. J'ai juste trouvé une page qui traduit celui que vous tapiez dans le langage de votre choix. Je me demande lesquels des lecteurs habituels d'agenda de Tranter pourront lire ceci. D'ailleurs, une armée des fourmis rampent au-dessus de mon ordinateur pendant que je tape ceci!

Holidays are great. I've even got time to read the "Bangkok Post". This story's great!

"A boy and his date were parked on a back road some distance from town. Things were getting hot and heavy when the girl stopped the boy. "I really should have mentioned this earlier, but I'm actually a hooker and I charge 500 Bhat for sex," she said.
The boy just looked at her for a couple of seconds, then reluctantly paid her and they did their thing. After the cigarette, the boy just sat in the driver's seat looking out the window. "Why aren't we going anywhere?" asked the girl.
"Well, I should have mentioned this before, but I'm actually a taxi driver, and the fare back to town is 550 Bhat"

Songkran
(Thai New Year)

Circumnavigating Thailand

Bangkok => Khon Kaen => Phitsanulok => Sukhothai => Chiang Mai => Chiang Rai => Golden Triangle => Burma !! => Bangkok

Plane : Bus : Train : Jeep : Rickshaw : Tuktuk : Songthaw : Foot!

Thais celebrate the Thai new year for three days in April known as Songkran. In Bangkok and every town and village around the country people share good luck by throwing water over one and all. Scoops from a silver bowl are traditional, but these days more effective soakings come from plastic buckets, pump action water guns of Star Wars technology - and even oil drums with stirrup pumps mounted on trucks. I even saw shops selling gigantic ice cubes to put in your water so that it was freezing cold on firing. It is however all good natured, a perfect example of Sanook, The Thai idea of having fun. Farangs (foreigners) get more than their fair share of water at this time of year. I ended my trip with every single piece of clothing I took with me, soaked. Even in the little restaurant in Burma, we asked for the bill, paid, then the waitress tipped a glass of icy cold water down the back of our necks.

I didn't take the digital camera with me, I took my other, zoom lense camera... so you'll have to wait to see the photos when next we meet. Didn't get many photos of the amazing songkran activities though as it was not safe to carry a camera and keep it dry.

Visited lots of Phêua Chii-Wít venues over the holiday. Got over enthusiastic and started to put together a venue-guide (as I haven't been able to find one on the web in English). Not sure I'll find time or motivation to finish it off though.

Imagine the scene, I'm sure you've seen it many times before on Candid Camera or a Jeremy Beedle TV programme... Customer walks into small shoe shop and looks at all shoes neatly displayed on the shelves. Chooses one and asks the only attendant to fetch the matching pair. As soon as the attendent goes into the back room, all the shelves collapse scattering the shoes every where. Attendant returns to find customer standing embarassed in the midst of footware chaos....

Received an email from my Mother after she read the diary entry for 2nd April. Having read it again myself I can see why she thinks I'm setting up home with Khun Oi ! Lots of questions about who she was and where I met her. I had to explain that she is the personnel officer at works who looks after staff housing... Rai Raeng Khao Jai Pit!

A guy dials his home phone number from work. A strange woman answers. The guy says, "Who is this?" "This is the maid," answers the woman. "We don't have a maid!" "I was just hired this morning by the lady of the house." "Well, this is her husband. Is she there?" "Ummm... she's upstairs in the bedroom with someone who I just figured was her husband."

The guy is fuming. He says to the maid, "Listen, would you like to make $50,000?" "What do I have to do?" "I want you to get my gun from my desk in the den and shoot that jerk she's with." The maid puts down the phone. The guy hears footsteps, followed by gunshots. The maid comes back to the phone. "What should I do with the bodies?" "Throw them in the swimming pool!" "What pool?" "Uh... is this 823-4812?"

Rachel, What a star! ... literally. All those Thai lessons we had together paid off eventually...

Last week Rachel was employed as an extra for the filming of The Beach. She featured in one scene with old Leonardo himself and gave an oscar winning walk in the background of another scene where she seductively pushes her sunglasses up onto her head.

She was paid 900 baht for her services but when asked earlier today she replied "..I didn't do it for the money". Leonardo said he'd look forward to an opportunity of working with Rachel again and wishes that she'd been the one he'd held on the bow of The Titanic.

Despite all this she was back in school teaching today and actually granted me a brief audience as we waited for the photocopier.

After reading newspaper reports that Thailand is the place to buy computers at the lowest prices, I've finally been out and got myself a new toy.

I'm typing this on my new Pentium II 350Mhz, 6.4 Gigabyte hard drive, 64 Meg Ram, 40X CD drive, 200W speaker, inbuilt fax modem, 104 key Thai/English keyboard running Windows 98, Office 97 with 101 Dalmation design dustcover.

As I had previously bought a 17" screen, that little lot (without monitor) cost me 27000 baht (£450). A bargain or what?

Here are the names of some of the films available from video clubs in Bangkok. Certainly they seem to cater for all tastes.

Upon closer perusal, the film titles become increasingly more interesting, but less suitable to print. However, to give you a rough idea of what to expect there are offered such cinematic delights as Confection Of A Sex Slave, presumably an exciting tale about a new chocolate bar on the market, and Hey There's Nakes Bodies On My TV, reportedly a technical programme on television maintenance. Then there is the award-winning Casting Cough, a fascinating documentary on throat irritations and how to cure them.

Went to the "Seri Centre" for the first time. Not too far away for here and it has a reputation for cheap computer products. I bought:

He said "I'm going to chop off the bottom of one of your trouser legs and put it in a library."

"So I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me "Can you give me a lift?" I said "Sure, you look great, the world's your oyster, go for it."

It was on the 28th April last year that Andy Quinton took over the writing of this diary. I thought it was ~~hilariou~~.. ~~hilereou~~... ~~hill~~... very funny. Take a look...

Wow.. Just read Simon Foley's account of his disasterous trip to Nepal. I've had bad things happen to me once in a while but not all in the same trip...

The story is long and detailed, you'll have to read it for yourself, but it ends with:

And the back of his anorak was leaping up and down, and people were chucking money to him. I said 'Do you earn a living doing that?'
He said 'Yes, this is my livelihood.'

The Diary:

April 1999