Strange Honeymoon

We rode the motorcycle through the countryside and along the coast to Songkhla. The main roads are awful and quite dangerous, so even though it is a fair bit further, it is a very pleasant ride. The rice fields and the solitary figure of the farmer in the distance. It's a very peaceful scene. The muslim village as you hit the coast is worthy of note. It's smells of fish and the faces of the dark villagers look up in surprise as you speed along the roads.

The two best hotels that we wanted to stay at were both full. One had a bloody conference going on - full of half wits pretending to be important and actually interested in the boring subject matter. God, is there nothing worse than those awful conferences? The shits you meet at them, peddling their crap with such gusto.

We ended up checking into a cheap hotel in The Dark Side - the notrious part of town, where fat, white, drunken engineers from the oil rigs swill around on the barroom floor in lager and cheap whores. It's always a good place to watch pickled turds mouth off about how rich they are as they force another pint of flat lager into their enormous guts.

We checked out the newly opened "Sea World". Not so much a world, but a room with some fish tanks in. I observed three bods from management as I stepped outside into the sunshine. They smiled and looked professional, wondering why the place wasn't heaving. The snazzy new car park and entrance court suffered badly from "ponding" and large areas of rainwater cut fat, middle-class Chinese families from off from their giant Silver 4x4 leisure cruisers. I'll leave Sea World to the imprisoned fishes that haunt it.

We only stayed two days. Such was the level of excitement in Songkhla, but we did strike gold last night and caught the amazing Reggae/Ska band at Chai's bar. I had been there before with Patrick, when indeed, we were forced to attend some crap English conference. Our collective pain was lanced and drained by a visit to the Irish pub, where we consumed pints of Guinness, and sloped across the street to the Ska party. The Canadian owner gave us some grass and we had a right old time. This time was less spectacular, but still very cool and we met the fat boy with the birds nest hair who plays a mini trumpet. Last night he was on bass and they performed winding, loose reggae tracks. We got talking and found out about a party he has the first Friday of every month. So, we might be making a return visit.

Two days was enough and we came back this morning. It was Oi's birthday and I found a learner's version of The Call of the Wild which she read right through. She is now sitting through Charlton Heston's rendition, which has moments of greatness, but is also lame in a very bad way. Watch at your peril.

However, we are back at home surrounded by our technology. It was a strange honeymoon - it rained most of the only full day we were there. It reminded me of rainy holidays in England. Looking out at grey nothing through the hotel window. I thought of all those lonely businessmen who spend most of there lives in hotels. So, we had moments of being trapped in a cheap hotel. At least there was a mini-bar.