Easyjet Feedback Form

EasyJet Feedback Complaint
By now you should realize part of my rants are customer service aimed ones.  I'm a big believer in making a point to multi national companies that they usually suck and they should probably give you free shit.  Local businesses I tend to go less harsh on, because there's usually some guy who's livelihood is deeply dependent on it and besides that, trying to get free shit out of a small restaurant or bar "just because" is usually a dick move.  I'd rant about sue culture, but it's not a tangent I'm going down today.  I'm just firing out my EasyJet Feedback Form about an issue I had. Also note, I did try an incognito window and on my phone for the same flights before I booked them, so this is not one of those "cookie" things.




First off, your prices are ridiculous.  On the morning of the 5th June I checked the prices for some flights to from Belfast.  Roughly they came to around £90 all inclusive, unfortunately I hesitated and went to book it later.  The prices jumped up by £50.  Then, when I was finalizing the booking, it jumped up another £5.  I was hugely irritated, but I booked the flights anyway.  I checked my bank account the next day.  Strange.  There were two withdrawls of the same amount  taken by EasyJet from my bank account with different confirmation codes on them.  I rang customer service and after ten minutes of explaining the situation and passing the code on was told to use the website to forward a screenshot through and an explanation.  TEN MINUTES I WASTED ON A CALL THAT WAS CHARGED TO FIX A PROBLEM CAUSED BY EASYJET'S WEBSITE/SERVER/CONNECTION/LAG I DON'T KNOW.  I'm not a tech expert, but this is clearly your fault.  Then after going through your website to submit the complaint form with the screenshot receive an e-mail to say that it will take up to 21 days to look into this issue.  Does this seem acceptable to you?  Maybe to Stelios he can afford to have £144 taken from his accont for no apparent reason.  In fact it probably doesn't even pay for a glass of champagne in the Burj Khalifa but why do I have to foot it.  You guys get to make interest on it over the 21 day period, I don't.  In fact, I am lucky that I have enough in my bank account to not immediately worry about £144, but had I not saved a little bit of cash in my account to cushion me from various emergencies, the double withdrawl could put me deep into an overdraft, or to the point that the bank charges me for being an unauthorized overdraft.  Would you guys be prepared to foot that bill?  Probably not.  So as you can see, despite the fact I have to fly with EasyJet because you guys are one of the few airlines to cover the London/Belfast trip these days, if I could avoid it after this, you're damn sure that I would.  So, your move Easy J, do better or have people like me writing snide replies to your feedback form forever more.

Rancho writes a letter of suggestion..

So I got drunk last night and decided to write this to Amazon.  Please note, I'm not an actual Irish Republican.  That's a chat for another time.

Listen to me motherfuckers and listen up good.  I have an idea that is going to REVOLUTIONIZE the Amazon Alexa. 

IN ALL ITS FORMS

Sometimes, I speak to my Echo Dot and I say "ALEXA!  SET AN ALARM FOR 7.30 AM!"  I have to do this in a cold as ice, Liam Neeson fashion because I'm drunk and Northern Irish and what I'm saying doesn't make sense to cold heartless robot devices.

Other times I say "ALEXA PLAY THE FOGGY DEW!"

Sometimes I do this after waking up, because nothing makes me wake up better than an Irish republican song that makes me want to go around shooting Britannia's huns with their long range guns, but wouldn't it be amazing that instead of me having to wake up to sound horrible alarm noise and me having to say "ALEXA STOP!" I've got Alexa set to play the FOGGY DEW!

So instead I'd say "ALEXA AT 8.30 AM PLAY THE FOGGY DEW!"

And then I'd be an hour late for work, but ready to charge on Westminster and demand a 32 county state!

THINK ABOUT IT.

YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE.

And their response:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us with your valuable suggestions. We love to hear from our customers on all aspects and I'm glad that you took time to write to us with your valuable feedback.

I think that is an Awesome suggestion, one that I would like to see added as well! I've forwarded your message to our Amazon Echo development team for consideration as we make further improvements.

This is exactly what we are looking from our customers to help with the evolution of Amazon Echo, as we are continuously making improvements to your product experience based on the feedback we receive.

I'm sure that they'll carefully look into this and take necessary actions in the nearest future. I'd like to thank you for bringing this into our notice.

We have a dedicated Echo team who works on customers feedback and I'm glad that you have contacted us regarding the areas of improvement.

I appreciate your loyalty towards Amazon.co.uk.

For the meantime, please extend your patience and co-operation while we work on this.

If you have additional suggestions for improvement, or you're having an issue with your device, You can reach us by phone directly using this link:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/clicktocall-alexasupport

Thanks for taking the time to provide your feedback.

Thanks for using Amazon Echo. We look forward to seeing you again soon.

Rancho Vice - The Sperm Donor

Rancho Vice – The Sperm Donor

So for a while now I’ve wondered how fertile I am.  There’s a couple of things over the years I’ve done which as a by-product lower sperm count.  Things like sitting with a laptop on my junk for hours, boozing, taking the odd “nut shot” in sparring, drinking a lot of tap water.  Yes the last one seems like a strange one, but recent studies say that due to the run-off excess artificial oestrogen in the urine of women who take the pill and some strange phenomena in fish like salmon changing gender, European tap water often acts like a death sentence for men’s sperm count.  Whilst it’s not like I’m trying to create any children, I am curious as to if I ever can have them and due to some other background things I’ve been considering recently, I don’t know what the likelihood of me ever having a stable family is.  Recently advertisements on Facebook for the London Sperm Bank have been popping up.  I clicked them and read the blurb, £35 for a donation.  As an MA student, that seems like a good deal.  I can use that £35 to pay for my weekly food budget and a couple of pints on top.  So, I thought to myself why not see what happens.  I filled in a form and got some e-mails back from a woman at the clinic called Daisy.  We arranged a time for me to have a meeting with her and what I’d need to do.  Firstly I had to fill in a health questionnaire, asking about previous medical history, personality and academic background.  Second of all, I’d need to ejaculate almost 72 hours prior to going in for the meeting.  No more, no less.  Unfortunately I wasn’t really able to fit in a wank on the Tuesday three days before the Friday meet, so my last self-flagellation had been roughly 96 hours.  Which was odd because I’d been doing some serious flirting with the co-star of a short we’d been acting in on the Tuesday and at one point I was almost convinced she was going to pull over the car in a country lane and get on my lap.  Being that she’s married, that probably wasn’t going to happen even if I’d suggested it a little bit more, even if she did drop some hints about marital issues during the drive home from the shoot.  Still it’s one for the imagination sometime.

Anyway, digressing about sexual encounters that only happened in my mind, I was quite keen to have a wank on the Friday.  In typical London fashion, on the way to the clinic in St Thomas Street (right by London Bridge tube) I’d seen attractive people all around me.  Not to mention the two receptionists of the bank were MILFY and GILFY respectively.  Daisy herself had the certain cheekiness and cuteness I’d almost suspected she might have with a name like Daisy.  She sat me down and we have a chat about the process and my family health background.  At this point, I have to admit I told a few porky pies.  First of all, I drink a lot more than ten units per week.  I mean, this week (starting from Sunday onwards), I’ve had in around 40-50 units.  Now, being that it’s an Easter break, I can kind of excuse myself and say “I’ve been on holiday mode”, but it’s not like this isn’t something that happens at least a couple of times per month.  She asked me about drug history, which I denied.  I’m not even going to list what I’ve got up to in that department, but on the Brightside I’ve never been physically addicted to anything.  There was a question on the health questionnaire about number of sexual partners in the twelve months – I wrote two.  Again, I’m not going to pass too many remarks on that, but I may have been a bit deceptive by only writing two.  I can’t see me getting into a relationship too soon.  Still, I’ve been careful, got myself checked out after the last bit of bare backing, so as far as I know I’m clean.  Lastly with the questionnaire I underplayed my family’s health issues.  I admitted to my father dying of bile duct cancer seven years ago, which may have been as a result of working in a quarry years prior and asbestos getting into his system.  I admitted that my Grandmother on my dad’s side had also bit the dust due to the big C word, but this was of the lungs and due to the fact she smoked like a chimney.  She grew up in different times.  I also said my Grandfather on my Mum’s side had died of a heart attack, but I think he was definitely younger than 70 when it happened.  I blamed over indulgence on pork for that one, which could have been true.  People from Magherafelt love the sausage.  However, I didn’t mention my Uncle on my Mum’s side dying as a result of liver cancer caused by alcoholism, though I did mention his alcoholism, I suggested he’d recovered.  I also didn’t mention his brother, who despite being an incredible person, family man and all round great guy a victim of strokes, depression and as a by-product an occasional heavy drinker (not a constant boozer, but they sometimes suggest alcoholism is less about the quantity that you drink but the way and when you drink, his being driven by stress puts him in the category).  My Dad’s side complete with schizophrenic uncle, potentially sociopathic aunt didn’t get brought into the equation either.  If I’d been connected to a Guantanamo bay lie detector, I’d have been brought into get water boarded afterwards. 

Still, I figured – if I somehow manage to get through this questionnaire and my swimmers are somehow good enough, bloods and urine samples are to be collected and genetically analysed, looking for alleles that would signal genetic faults, or illnesses.  My active sperm count though would have to be nothing short of exemplary.  Recent changes to guidelines means that the required number of living swimmers has tripled.  I’d need to be shooting a pond full of tadpoles to make the cut.  Considering my fertility doubts, this seemed somewhat incredibly unlikely.  So, Daisy was happy enough for me to present a sample that day and brought me to a “production room”, gave me a plastic cup and told me to make use of it, just being sure to lock the door.  In the square room there were the following things – soap dispenser, hand towels, leather arm chair and a touch screen monitor with porn options.  There were six heterosexual ones and about the same homosexual ones.  Seeing as any attempt to watch gay porn usually makes my dick shrivel up into the size of a pea, like I’ve just got into freezing fucking water(one would assume fear or repressed homosexuality, fuck knows), I had a crack at the standard hetero porn.  It was largely outdated, one of the videos even had 1996 in the title and worst of all it would stop after only a minute and a half’s worth of footage.  I tried the milf therapist stuff, which almost got me going only for it to launch into weird foot fetish stuff.  I also kind of tried to recall on Tuesday’s imagined sexual encounter, or even of Daisy deciding to knock on the door of the room and offer a hand, kind of like that scene in Road Trip minus fingers getting jammed up my shit pipe, but I wasn’t able to relax into it properly.  Maybe my residual hangover from the drinking I’d been doing on Tuesday and Wednesday, some other niggling feelings and the fact I really needed a big dump were contributing to this temporary impotence.  Then I decided to get the phone out and at the risk of having my phone infected with a virus/spyware/other doozy, got onto PornHub.  I knew exactly which two words to search for.  Fake.  Taxi.  There’s something incredibly relaxing about Fake Taxi, not to mention almost all of the women are typically curvy, big breasted and turn me on with their flirtatious, occasionally believable dialogue.  So relaxing that within half a minute of the woman getting into the taxi that I was at full mast, ready to blast.  I wanked myself off into the plastic cup, having to slow down just before climax to make sure that I didn’t overshoot the target – something I’m more prone to do with a four day backlog and I’m shirking the gerkin aggressively.  I took a few moments to make sure there wasn’t anything left “in the chamber”, put the lid on the cup, washed my hands with soap, did my trousers up and dropped the cup into a chute to the lab before going on my way. 

The lovely Daisy told me I’d be receiving an e-mail two days later whether I’d be called in for another preliminary sample or whether the boys were the best of the best.  Well, let's see exactly what happens.

Rancho in Belfast

A strange thing happened to me the other evening and I explained it to a friend on facebook.

Some girl came up to me and tugged on my beard, so unsure as to whether she was flirting or being a dick, I tugged her hair roughly the same force. Her response was to grab my hair and really fucking yank it as hard as she could. Not known to back down and unsure as to whether this girl was a) into this kind of weird stuff b) deciding that her response was reasonable defense c) absolutely bananas, I mirrored her actions and started pulling pretty fucking viciously. We're locked in this hair pulling thing both heads almost touching the floor

This yanking thing happened twice

and then I decided to just walk away

but I saw her about half an hour later, so I walk up and ask "What the heck was that all about?"

She replies "You are no gentleman"

Kind of taken aback I said "You're no lady, you started that. I wouldn't randomly walk up to someone and pull their hair, so why is it suddenly okay to do it with my beard?"

She warned me that I need to be careful with that kind of behaviour because I could end up with a lawsuit.

She then decided to just speak French at me

and said something like I'm never talking to you again

I still wonder what was going on there

whether she was looking for a different response and whether it would have meant she dispersed with the panties

Two Days is Enough in Ko Lanta

Saturday 27th July

The Magician and I had kept in touch using the available wi-fi sources to plan our exit from Phi Phi.  We'd finally got a dry morning to get ghost and arranged to meet on the pier.  Before I got to the pier, I bought a ticket for the eleven o'clock boat and I waited for him to appear.  With no wi-fi avaible to me on the pier, we no longer had contact and when the boat appeared I had to give up waiting for him and boarded without him.  As the ferry began surfing the sea waves towards Lanta, I watched Phi Phi disappear and wondered if the Magician had slept in or found a girl along the way.  Whilst on the boat, we didn't see each other at all, until we disembarked at Lanta.  There he waited by the pier at the other end, somehow he'd managed to catch another boat that departed from Ko Phi Phi at the exact same time.

As soon as we left the boat onto the main island of Ko Lanta Yai, there were hordes of Thai men representing their family guest houses, vying for our business.  We looked at a few of the promo booklets and decided we could check one or two of them out.  Before that we had to take the bus from the dock to the main town of the island, Ban Saladan.  It dropped us off by two connected bungalow/guest house resorts where after assessing the various buildings and haggling on a price settled for a two bed bungalow.  After throwing her stuff into our digs we headed into the town to rent scooters.  Scooters here seemed particularly overpriced and more haggling had to be done just to rent poor quality, decidedly wonkey vehicles.  The Magician took a Honda Scoopy whilst I got the Yamaha equivalent - the Fino.  I haven't got much good to say about the Fino

Do not go near this bike

As cute as it tries to be, going for the retro mod style-scooter look, the handling is horribly light and twice I felt the bike shift as I rode through sand or puddles.  I felt like it lacked the grip needed for a heavy guy like me.  We rode around  Yai and seemed to cover a fair portion of the 30 km length but didn't find anything particularly interesting about it.  If there was, we didn't get to see it finding our scooter riding time cut short by a deluge heavy enough to warrant building an ark.  We retreated to the bungalow, where I took a nap feeling the need to sleep off some more of the residual hangover built up over the four nights on Phi Phi. As I did so, the Magician did some work with a lot of the photos he'd taken over the last few weeks.  He had the makings of a decent photographer - a decent camera and a keen eye.  Deftly, he used photoshop to tweak some of the shots, some capturing the natural beauty of the island coastlines, some capturing the natural beauty of his conquests.  Whatever sweet talk he had used to convince the girls to pose for him must have been golden.  Though he explained to me that in his experience, women are very often willing to have their breasts or bum snapped provided it doesn't show their faces.  The pictures were tastefully done too, using clever lighting to highlight their delicate attributes.  I could only shake my head in a disbelieving way, a little bit jealous of his silver-tongued skills.

After a few hours of sleeping, we went to get some food from the guest house restaurant.  It was fine and for me it filled a hole.  The same couldn't be said for the Magician.  He enjoyed the food but his appetite was truly savage.  We walked through a swimming pool area shared by the guesthouses to another bar/restaurant.  Not feeling the need for any more food myself, I took to enjoying a few cocktails and beers.  We sat chatting for a bit amongst ourselves but after a while I decided to approach a good looking pair of Canadian girls.  They were friendly at first but I should have noted that I'd watched two guys chat to them for a good solid fifteen minutes, only to walk back to the bar, ditching the pair.  This was an indicator of how thick these girls actually were.  Maybe they were capable of writing a decent essay or had skills that they weren't displaying but on the surface they didn't show much more IQ than Peewee Herman in conversation.  There's a retro reference they most certainly wouldn't get.  They also seemed like the type of young women that had to have male attention at all times.  We began a drinking game with them and our company wasn't enough so they asked two younger Dutch guys into the game.  They were actually cool dudes but their facial expressions gave away their shared frustration at the two girls, who mid-game started arguing with each other for delegating drinks to each other.  When she realized she was losing and was expected to down her drink, the blonde one took the huff and decided 

"I'm bored of this game!  I'm not playing any more."

Of course this meant we had to make fun of her in a joking teasing way.  We weren't going to let that slide.  This only exacerbated her existing huff and the two girls decided they were going off to some club in the town.

Neither the Magician and I, nor the Dutch guys were interested in going off in the torrential downfall to check out some probably empty club.  We weren't up for going to the bar opposite either, aptly named "Sexy Lady" and advertised as a Bar/Massage Parlour.  Hilarious as it sounded, the no prostitutes rule still applied.  

We hung out with the Dutch guys for a drink or two, but it there didn't seem to be much point in staying up and getting drunk for no reason.  Going to bed earlyish meant we would have more time to explore the rest of the island the next day.  

Sunday 28th July

In the morning, I got to swap my Yamaha for another Scoopy and found the bike a lot more enjoyable to ride.  We spent most of the day riding around the smaller island of Ko Lanta.  Found a decent beach that was completely uninhabited, took a small swim but with no bikini clad female figures our draw to the beach was limited.  Drive on and see more, that was the game plan.

I'm pretty sure these pictures were taken during the few sunny hours of Ko Lanta that we had.  Yeah, a decent bit of natural beauty, but just not a big enough reason to stay there.  During the day we booked a bus to Phuket as the low season boat service would have meant going back to Phi Phi, waiting for several hours on the pier and getting another boat.  The bus would have been quicker and hopefully if there were any morning rains we could dodge them.

Here's a terribly badly taken video of the abandoned beach we found whilst biking around.

We ate decent meals again, left the bikes off and got back to our guesthouse before a thick monsoon hit.  Stupidly I realized just as we got back I had left my phone and room key in the compartment under the seat of the bike.  I had to traipse the 1 km back down the road to grab it.  I'd no problem getting it back and the kind scooter rental lady gave me a lift back through the pouring rain.  I offered her a tip but she thanked me and refused the offer.  Nice lady.

There were a few casual drinks to be had with the Dutch teens that night who informed us our two lady friends from the night before had walked in drunk with a group of ten guys following them to leer at but had since left.  Maybe they were having all kinds of fun we weren't privy to but I was happy spending time with intelligent people not desperately seeking attention and prepared to fall out with their best friends over a drinking game.  Fuck I'm such a snob.

Nothing much came about.  Phuket was next.  A bus collected us on Monday morning and we began our four hour journey to the island of sin.

Phi Phi Part Two - Crude, Confused and Entirely Unpolished

Rainy Days and Muay Thai Fights

I had planned on climbing the mountain and walking round to long beach in the morning to see a purer Phi Phi.  A Phi Phi less caught up in imbibing caffeine and alcohol based chemicals and more about embracing it's natural beauty.  This plan was sourly dashed by torrential downfall which made the way all but impassable.  Maybe I could have attempted the climb and marched through the wetness, allowed myself to be soaked to the skin but I saw no appeal.  The sky was a thick granite-like grey and as overly-dramatic as it sounds held a hue which matched my feelings at the time.  I still felt a little drained from Tuesday night's buckets and I was beginning to wonder what I was doing on Phi Phi.  I'd paid for another night in my guesthouse at 400 baht a throw and found myself unwilling to move too far from the room.  I could soak up the comfort of the double bed rather than soak up the rain.  I left once to get Pad Thai breakfast, then I returned.  

Phi Phi was expensive.  It had "island prices", which usually meant everything was 50-100% more expensive than the mainland.  Accomodation was double what it was in Chiang Mai.  Food was drastically more expensive.  Even 7/11s operated at a higher price.  I'm aware this may be in part due to the cost of shipping everything over, but there is of course a degree of profiting off of the holiday makers who have the money to spend.  I can't criticize this too much.  At no point in time do I feel like I'm paying an extortionate amount of money for anything.  Maybe I could buy beer cheaper in some European cities but that's as far as it goes.  The rest is still comparatively reasonably priced.

That night I planned to head to the Reggae Bar and have my fight.  I'd wanted to do it from the moment I got on Phi Phi but the girl's distaste for violence meant they weren't prepared to hang around and watch grown men kick lumps out of each other for a bucket of alcohol.  They did say they'd come and see me fight on that night though, as I'd take it on early so win or lose, I could enjoy the rest of the night without a nervousness sitting in my stomach.  With all my training, I felt there was more to lose than some average Joe with no experience.  If I got knocked out by some clown throwing wild hooks, I'd feel like an absolute tool.  I got into the bar at around 9 PM and signed up pretty much immediately.  A few guys were offered me as their opponent but after taking a look at me decided they didn't want to step up to the plate.  After twenty minutes of waiting, a small Argentinian guy came round and offered me the fight.  He asked to go lightly.  Internally I was at a crossroads.  I asked myself the question "Do I want to throw down?" and came up with the answer of "No."  I didn't want to get hurt and looking at the much shorter Hispanic man, I didn't want to hurt him too much either.  I offered him it as a chance not to much around, but to spar.  Not too hard, but with a little bit of conviction behind the strikes.  He agreed.

The Magician helped warm me up, holding his hands up to get me working my combos.  He'd fought semi-professionally in the past and though he'd put that life behind him, was still keen on being my corner man.  

That's a video of the third and final round of the fight.  As you can see there were times I could have really pushed forward with my combos, but I decided not to.  By and large I'd stuck to the agreement, those moments I pushed him into the corners I could have turned it on more and not stopped swinging until he was out cold but what purpose would that serve?  I probably could have gone even easier on him, but he kind of caught me in the nuts by accident in round one, so I left my space a little bit of room to have fun with him.  In round two, I threw a double jab, head kick combo which whilst not doing him a lot of harm felt fantastic to pull off.  Good schtuff.

The Magician had to head off after the fight to do some more work but I was content to stick around the bar and watch some more of the fights.  I changed back into my regular clothes and was brought a bucket of alcohol from the bar, which due to my agreement with my asshole wasn't for drinking.  I offered it to one of the Northern Irish guys who'd come to watch me but he was sticking to the beer.  My Argentinian opponent took it in the end, which I felt was pretty fair - I'll beat you, but I'll give you a drink afterwards.  I sat with a group of Dutch and English guys to watch the rest of the fights.  One of the scrawny English guys agreed to have a fight but he wanted to back out of the fight he'd been given - against a 94 kg musclebound Dubliner.  Despite the Dubliner promising he'd go easy on him, we all sensed something was up and the big lad was made to find another opponent.  Rob was still due to fight somebody and with no experience apart from the odd boxing lesson was a little bit nervous about the whole thing.  I took it upon myself to be his corner man and warmed him up for his fight.  As I taught him some combos, we stopped watching the beefcake Dubliner's fight which had come to an abrupt end halfway through round one.  The headhunter had gone swinging heavy handed hooks and put his unprepared adversary on his ass.

He went in the fight ready to take his opponent out.  His French opponent threw in the towel mid round two, exhausted and getting caught by the surprisingly hard hitting English man.  I think I felt prouder that my protege of five minutes had won so decisively.  I sat around to drink a few more beers, though I was sneaking them in from 7/11 to keep the costs down.

Once the Reggae bar closed around 11.30, after all of the fights had finished and it had played its two reggae songs of the night, we headed off to the beach for more of the shit music blasting bars.  There were large crowds outside two of the bars dancing to the garbage and I got chatting to people here and there.  I ran into a girl who I'd met in Ko Rong and Pnom Penh and was once again amazed at how easy it is to bump into the same people time and time again travelling the SE Asian circuit.  

Despite hating the masses of trashy people in Phi Phi, I found enough interesting individuals to keep me entertained on those nights out.  A Spanish girl who claimed to be a former actress in an Italian soap opera called 'Il Secreto'.  The friends of the big Dubliner, who were positively terrified of their friend.   A really good looking girl from southern Ireland also sparked up a bizarre conversation with me.

"Do you know Rory McIlroy?" she asked

"Why Rory and I were out for pints a few weeks ago," I joked, wondering if she was asking the question ironically.

"Oh really, do you know.." she named some other person whose name I haven't bothered remembering.

"No, I was joking about the Rory McIlroy thing, I don't actually know him personally.  I know who he is of course"

"Then you should know ____, he's younger than Rory but turning pro soon as well," she insisted.

"I can't say I follow golf, it's really just a game of darts with a club and a walk involved in it.  Not enough violence in it for me," I quipped.

"I'm hopefully going pro on the woman's circuit next year," she replied.

I'd really shot myself in the foot with that conversation.  Also with my drunk lecherous mind the only question I wanted to ask her was "You play golf, but what else do you do for fitness?  You don't get a body like that playing golf."  Thankfully before I could embarrass myself any further her friends interrupted and dragged her away.  Phew.

Though I may not have propositioned her, I soon found myself propositioned by a Northern Irish girl who for some bizarre reason assumed I was Spanish.  She hadn't heard me speak Castellano, she just decided by looking at me that I was from Madrid.  I don't think I could look any less Spanish if I actively tried.  When she heard I was from the same place as her she invited me back to her hostel "for some fun".  I threw caution to the wind and walked with her but the night air and brighter lights of the streets had a sobering effect on me.  I didn't know this girl and more importantly, I wasn't attracted to her.  Her eyes seemed pretty when she first spoke to me but as I studied her more she just seemed to be a drunk hobbit.  She'd had to ask my name three times and questioned where I was from twice.  I didn't want to be this girl's mistake and I certainly didn't want her to be one of mine.  I decided to back out from the arrangement.  Though I tried to let her down gently and said we'd regret it in the morning. She got pretty cross with me, assuming I'd lost interest in her physically.  Whilst this assumption was correct, I wasn't going to come clean and confess

"Actually you're right.  You're face isn't what I thought it was and I've realized your height/weight distribution isn't what I call arousing."

I made my way back to the beach, drank another store bought beer and chatted to the friend of the girl who'd had the panic attack on the boat over, then slumped off to bed.  Along the way I saw the small Northern Irish girl walk hand and hand with an English guy, presumably he'd be more willing to "have fun". Well drunk or not, the girl seemed to have her mind made up about sleeping with that evening.  Good for her.    

I needed to get off the damn island.  I wasn't doing anything but drinking and acting the bollocks.

Flooded Friday

Fuck that was a wet day!  When would this fucking rain end?

I paid for my fanned, cold water room for what I hoped was going to be the last night and then I sat around writing and watching TV as an ocean of water crashed out of the sky.  Perhaps I could have gone to Ko Lanta that day, but I didn't see the point of going to another island on the same wet coast of the same country.  I was as good being wet on Ko Phi Phi as I was going to be on Ko Lanta.  

Despite this The Magician and I came to the same conclusion.  Provided the boats were still running the next day, we were getting on the damn boat.  Come rain or shine.

I ventured out in the middle of the afternoon for some food and a massage.  I found a reasonably priced parlour and lay down to receive one of the weirdest massages I've ever had.  The girl in her mid 30s did some very strange things which I wasn't used to.  She laughed her way through it, tried playing with my dong and when I told her "No funny business" she tickled me under the armpits and towards the end of the strange rub down folded over my ears and flicked them with her fingers.  Even with all of this strange behaviour I had to appreciate this masseuse for one reason - she let me lie down and sleep off some more of my hangover and hide from the rain for a few hours more.  

It was late afternoon when I woke up, then trundled through lakes of puddles back to my room, slept some more, got up and ate in Papaya again then headed off to the Reggae Bar.  I'm getting predictable.  Part of me wanted to fight again, but I'd hammered another massive meal into me and I didn't fancy taking a shot to a full stomach. So I took to watching fights again. Some of the fights would be quite funny, in one particular fight, there was a guy clowning around doing forward rolls whilst his obviously more experienced and larger adversary tried to display his techniques.  This fight got stopped after the big guy who was getting infuriated struck his foe after the bell rang.  In another bout, there was a French man who had trained MMA back home whipped spinning back kicks and axe kicks at his opponent.  I'd watched him fight the night before and he really tested his opponents.  Part of me wanted to try my luck against the slick Parisienne but my gut as I said I wasn't going to test my gut.  By the time I had digested and found myself ready to fight there weren't too many viable opponents around.  I took to playing cornerman again for a girl from Limerick.  She was quite a big girl and was set to fight her smaller friend.  She had the intention of messing around and playing silly with her petit friend but when the little one started getting aggressive and throwing hard, my girl wasn't for taking any shit.  This led to a lot of drama post fight, in a way that, if I'm being sexist seemed so typically exclusive to young women.  There's the old assertion that men often become better friends after fighting - "To know someone, you must fight them" whereas women become more bitchy.  There's videos of grown men knocking ten shades of shit out of each other and in the most gentlemanly fashion shaking hands immediately after

The girls had come to Thailand in a group of around 9 girls.  Some knew each other very well, some were sisters, but these two hadn't been the closest before.  The fight had opened up a big can of worms they weren't aware of before.  Was there some underlying dislike of each other that they both contained?  Why had it turned so ugly?  My fighter had to do some profuse apologizing, even though she'd only responded to the viciousness presented against her.  It took a while for them to patch things up, but as they were sorting things out I took to playing Don King.  Some of the other, Irish girls wanted to fight but not each other, so I went looking for some viable competition.  There was a trio of pretty English girls sitting ringside on the opposite side of the bar who I tried to convince to step into the ring.  It'd be a perfect battle of the beauties bout, England v Ireland but they weren't prepared to step up.  They tried to present their male friend as a willing fighter but when I offered him a three round dance he stepped down.  I was a little bit too physically imposing. The closest I got to fighting was dancing around the ring with a Mexican girl who was happy to punch me.  She tested me when she nut-shotted me and declared that we were playing by her "anything goes ruleset".  Understandably I wasn't particularly happy about this and responded by grabbing the girl's left nipple between finger and thumb and delivering a fierce titty twister.

"YOU CAN'T DO THAT!" she howled in pain and disbelief.

"Anything goes right?"  I asked with a smirk on my face.  "Ok, how about no nutshots and I won't grab your boobs?"

I laughed as she threw punches to my stomach and ended up only hurting her pudgy little hands on whatever abdominal muscles I had left from the training at Team Quest.  

It seemed like the Friday night crowd was more intent on hitting up the beach bars and the bar was for closing soon.  Rather than go to the beach bars, I finally got to check out Banana Bar, where the English guy I'd helped out was promo-ing outside.  The Irish girls joined me and my little protege gave me an order

"Look after my friend, Ilia please.  She's wasted"

I did as asked and followed after the girl I was supposed to look after - a tall, pretty, slim, brown haired girl with blue eyes.  How did she know my type? Ok.. In all honesty, I might have preferred another girl in the group looks wise, but I genuinely wanted to prove to myself I was a nice guy, capable of doing something I was asked to do.  I wanted to believe I could act chivalrous without having too much of an ulterior motive.  We sat in the chilled hip hop playing Banana Bar longue and conversated over a drink.  The girl insisted she wasn't as drunk as "her friend's little sister" believed.  She was pretty bent on getting drunk though.  I didn't share her urgency.  I wanted to keep this night a chilled out beer night.  After getting drunk twice that week already, I was in no rush to dive into another spell of alcoholic infused idiocy.  Besides that my tolerance to alcohol seems to be getting so strong that my sober and drunken state merge.  I'm just a little bit louder and more obnoxious when I'm drunk, which isn't something we really need.

When Ilia asked me if she should have another drink, I tried to discourage the girl from drinking too much but she was happy to plow ahead with the vodka and juice mixers, only getting drunker and drunker.  When the bar closed we locked lips briefly then headed off to one of the beach bars, where she continued to drink.  I grabbed another big beer from the 7/11 en-route but I was drinking it so slowly it had gone flat by the time I'd finished it.  Towards the end of the night we ended up getting some snacks from a supermarket and sat to munch them outside.  A Japanese girl joined us for a while and wanted to buy us drinks, the poor girl didn't know where her friends or her hotel was and just wanted some company.  I had enough beer for one night and was conscious of my morning departure to Lanta.  Whilst I would have loved to help the Japanese girl, I wasn't going to go around every guest house/hotel/hostel with her and Ilia was drunk enough that she wasn't entirely sure where she was supposed to be staying either.  I thought I'd take care of one thing at a time and make sure the Irish girl got to bed first, swearing I'd go to bed straight after.  The rain seemed like it had stopped and the Magician and agreed on boat times, so I didn't intend on staying up too much later.

Ilia and I said our goodbyes to the Japanese girl then went walking in the rough direction where she thought her hotel was.  We found it and I walked her in to the building and kissed her goodnight outside of her room.  She wanted me to go in with her but I saw little point.  Earlier she had asserted that nothing would happen with us apart from sleeping and maybe breakfast in the morning, after all she was sharing a triple bed room with two of her friends.  Outside the room though she rubbed my fake football shirt and purred in my ear "We'll go in there and then Liverpool can do whatever Liverpool wants to do".  I'll not lie, I was extremely tempted, everything stirred physically but my brain told me no.  Why?  I'm not sure.  My conscience rang again, the girl was drunk.  Perhaps she was sober enough to make a decision she wasn't going to regret but I didn't want to take that chance.  I recall think I was trying to stick to my decision that I made previously, looking after the girl, making sure she was safe.  Lastly she looked, sounded and acted so much like a girl I dated a few years back, without getting more introspective than I painfully already am, there's a danger that I could have started calling her "Sarah".

When I wished her goodnight and walked away she became irritated, accusing me of going off to see some other "girlfriend".  I wasn't prepared to deal with the paranoia she presented.  She walked with me out of the building anyway, deciding she was going to go back to the shop and buy some more drink.  I was done looking after her.  There's only so much I was prepared to help her.  She could revel in her holiday alcoholism all she wanted, but she could do it alone.  If I'd been more predatory I probably could have had my way with her, if I'd have invited her back to my room I'm not sure if she would've declined.

As I talk of these decisions, I don't berate myself that much.  A few schools of thought battled it out in my head. There's were the words of the leftist media, which make me more aware of the feminist cause and the notion that there is too much of a promotion of the "lad culture" that has existed since the 90's, putting pressure on men to bed women to make them lads.  There were the thoughts that my mother would have for me "Could I not take more time with a woman, to get to know her before I slept with her?"   There were my biological impulses saying "Just do it, you'll enjoy it", urging me on.  I  was prepared to ignore feeling I was doing some greater good.   Three times in a week, I seemed to be obeying some confused moral compass, my brain overstimulated with choices, influenced by both my situation in front of me and the words of Guardian articles and Facebook posts.

Also why was it that I spent so much time in these moments?  Should I not be seeking something other than sex and alcohol?  Why to the point why was it that I spent so much time being influenced by the world wide web?  I tossed around the idea of heading off to some Buddhist monk retreat to relieve myself of the grasp of modern day's temptations and interruptions.  A week or two of serenity and mindfulness to get some head space could have been the thing to fix me, reset my priorities and give me another point of view.   The idea was tossed around a few times but it was ultimately tossed in the trash.  It seemed too cliche.  To use some more fancy French words I wasn't another one of these faux noveau hippies.  I wasn't some kid on his "gap yah" with the pretentious intentions of saving the world.

I may regret not doing going off one of these retreats.  After all, you regret the things you don't do more than the things you do.  Deciding not to go in advance because of preconceptions of pretentiousness is a waste of an opportunity for a new experience.

Final Thoughts
After an average sleep, I got up to a bright sky, went to the port and bought my ticket to Ko Lanta.  The Magician wasn't there like I'd expected for him to be but I couldn't wait for him.  I hopped on the boat and didn't look back.

If only one image of  Ko Phi Phi stays with me, it may be walking past dumb English kids in tattoo parlours as they sat pouring alcohol down their throats watching one of their friend's get permanently branded with some ink.  How many end up out of their heads making poor decisions that leave them with some poor piece of skin art colouring their outter epidermis for the rest of their life.  Maybe they get some meaningful and tastefully done Thai style spiritual piece, they'll smile every time they see.  Or maybe, as I suspect they end up with some trashy joke piece, they regret the very next day.

Phi Phi may have recovered economically from the tsunami that hit it in 2004 but it's still not somewhere I can in clear conscience recommend a visit to.  Part of me thinks that of all my mistakes, it was going there.
Yet contrary to that, part of me wants to go back, have another fight in the Reggae Bar and then behave ungentlemanly - drink until my conscience shuts down and let my groin take front seat in the decision making process.  I also felt like I failed to see the good parts, the real beautiful bit behind the mountain.  Maybe I made a mistake in opting out of seeing Maya Bay just because I hold The Beach accountable for bringing the Mongol hordes of Eurotrash to Thailand.  They may have brought wealth and tourism to the country but they brought their noise and lack of respect with them.  Not that I'm any better...

Next..  2 Days is Enough in Ko Lanta

Phi Phi Part One

Disasters getting to Ko Phi Phi Part One
My principle wasn't the second overnight bus ride in a row that got me to Surat Thani that was the main mistake.  After all, I'd a brief chance to practice my Spanish with an Argentinian couple and despite the halfway stop in the typical overpriced for basic Thai food restaurant, presumably owned by the bus driver's mate, perhaps with a cheeky commission-handshake involved with each visit, I haven't got that much to complain about, at least it got us to our stop on time.

We arrived at Surat Thani at around 6.40 AM, a town that acts as a good port to some of the islands on the east coast of Thailand - Ko Phangnan, Ko Tao, Ko Samui, but I wasn't going to any of those islands.  It also acts as a kind-of halfway point from Bangkok to Krabbi, which works as a port to those islands on the western coast, most importantly to Ko Phi Phi, where I was headed.  It dropped us off at the most ridiculously overpriced cafe/travel agent's office I've ever been to, where we were to wait until 7.30 AM for the bus to Krabbi.  Wanting food and water, but not wanting to pay through the nose for the overpriced crap sandwiches, I asked the travel agent if it were OK to go for a quick walk.

"No, you need to stay here," he commanded.

"The bus doesn't come until 7.30 does it?" I asked.

"Yes, 7.30."

"Well, then we have 50 minutes, I'll be back in ten minutes," I assured him.

"OK, but if you're late, or the bus arrives early it will leave without you," he warned.

Thailand time is a little bit like Spanish time.  Almost nothing is ever on time.  I suspect the agent knew I was planning on getting some reasonably priced snacks and wasn't too happy about us spending money in other places.  I walked with two young Dutch women, Nova and S to get some roadside fried chicken, some water and some semi-boiled eggs, which when cracked open turned out to be disappointingly runny.  We got back to the picnic tabled travel agent area, with twenty minutes to spare - for the scheduled time.  The bus to Krabbi was two hours late to pick us up, then it drove two streets away, where we spent another forty minutes or so waiting for Thai passengers to board.  To suspect another thing, buses in Asia don't like to leave their points of origin with anything less than maximum and with this being off season, they were shy of the number of tourists required to deem the bus profitable enough to leave without locals.  Unsurprisingly this bus arrived late to Krabbi.  As the local passengers got off at various spots I'd found a spot at the back of the bus to lie down and sleep, in order to try and recoup some of the sleep debt incurred over back to back night buses.  I woke up to the angry Thai bus staff, who'd almost driven off with my unconscious state in tow.  Thankfully the Dutch girls had alerted them of my presence and I roused into an awake but grumpy state before leaving the bus, giving off to the staff for their repeated grouchy rudeness, which they'd displayed multiple times over the journey.

In some ways, I still find my grumpiness justifiable.  The bus hadn't even taken us to the Krabbi port, it had taken us to some other remote travel agent where we were required to pay 50 baht per person to the tuk-tuk driver to get us to said port.  This struck me as one of those "Who needs customer service when you can just rip off the fat westerners at every given opportunity" moments.  When we got to the port, they were less than helpful in regards to the ferry.  Due to the dicking about waiting for the bus from Surat Thani to Krabbi, we'd missed the ferry we had the ticket for.  This meant buying another ticket unless we were able to provide a phone number for the travel agent where we got the original ticket.  This is something I could not do.My mistake lay in not getting the business card of the travel agent.  The telephone number had been printed on the receipt of purchase, which unfortunately I'd had to hand in to one of the buses.  Without this I had to fork over another 400 baht, but before that I needed to get more cash out.

To explain Baht again as a currency, in a very strange sense, it's a decimal currency.  Almost nothing is less than one Baht but there are coins that are equal to less than one.  Fractions of a penny.  Occasionally you'll buy something with a fraction of a penny in its cost.  A bottle of milkshake might cost you 12.25 baht which is roughly 24.5p.  Most of the times you throw those penny fractions change pieces in charity boxes when they appear, but they affected me that day in the most irritating fashion.

When I went to get the money out, I was asked to type in the amount I required to take out.  The machine displayed a decimal point, followed by two zeroes.   Not having come across these decimal points before I mistook this decimal point for a comma, so when I entered the amount I wanted to take out, I was short two zeroes.  Instead of taking out 10,000 baht (200 pounds), I took out 100 (2 pounds).  OK, you say then just put your card in again and take out 10,000 baht.  No problem.  Except for the fact every withdraw in Thailand charges you around 180 baht (3.60) for the withdrawal.  So this particular error meant I had to pay this three pounds sixty twice, just for taking out the miniscule amount of two pounds the first time round.  I grumbled and took the hit on the chin, nobody was going to refund me for the ferry ticket, nobody was going to refund me for this bullshit.  Despite Thailand trying to claw money out of me at every turn, I wasn't backing down.  An English guy who had lived on Koh Phi Phi before was stuck for cash and his bank card was getting rejected by the same ATM that had ripped me off.  I paid for his ticket under the grounds that he'd pay me back as soon as he got back to his work place, Phi Phi's Banana Bar.  Sure, he could have turned out to be a complete scammer but I decided to have a little bit of faith in humanity for a change.

After all this ticket drama, we boarded the ferry and were all set to go when drama of a different kind took place.  A girl who was about to get on the ferry was suddenly having a panic attack, her friend had to get off the boat and comfort her but for some reason they left their luggage on the boat, in the care of another group of girls whom they'd just met.  I kind of felt sorry for her, but there was nothing I could do.  The boat sped away from the dock and a large number of us sat on the deck watching the boat ride the waves on the way to our destination.  As I sat, I scribbled down on journal pages I no longer have, one of those waves crashed overboard and drenched the paper with its salty sea goodness.  Also on board the boat was a large group of Northern Irish uni students.  They were good craic, but they were an indicator of the type of people I'd be surrounded by on Koh Phi Phi, the type of people I'd have been happy as a pig in shit acting like a lunatic with a few years ago.  Call me a grumpy old cunt, but the prospect of all day drinking just doesn't excite me in the way it used to.  I need an occasion, other than "You're on a beautiful island off the coast of Thailand".
Maybe I'm taking myself too seriously.  Maybe I just burnt myself out in that trashy town in Cambodia. Maybe I've just lost my ability to have fun?

Day One
We arrived in the island and I can't deny its beauty.  It was as picturesque as any postcard could ever be.  There were no cars there either.  To get around you had one choice - walk.  The two Dutch girls, the English guy and I walked through the crowded, narrow-street'ed town in search of a place to stay.  The English guy stopped at the Banana bar, grabbed some cash and gave me what I was due, plus a little more to make up for some of the loss incurred at the ATM.  Good guy.  At this point we all separated for a while in order to find somewhere suitable.  I've no idea what my guesthouse was called, but I was immediately struck by how much more expensive everything was on the island than it was in Chiang Mai.  400 baht got me a pretty basic double bed room with fan and ensuite.  Perhaps I could have got something a hundred baht cheaper for a dorm bed room but that would of been my own personal hells.  Sharing with a bunch of drunk Eurotrash kids.  Whether they were English, Irish, Spanish or French I knew there'd be no chance of sleeping if I was going to be surrounded by their bucket guzzling ways, regardless of their nationality.

I checked in and went out for some much needed grub.  I bumped into the two Dutch girls and they joined me in a generic "we do western food" restaurant.  I've no idea what I ate.  It could have been pizza.  It could have been a panini.  I don't have a clue what I ate then, but the restaurant happened to have a decent wifi connection, which I used to contact the two Italian girls and the Magician.  Once again, I'd missed the girls by a day, they'd hopped off to the other island but the Magician soon appeared.  He was on good form, well rested and beaming the type of smile that said "I've just spent a week with a beautiful woman".   We chilled for a while then checked out a few of the bars in the town.  I watched some of the scrappy fights in Phi Phi's well known Reggae Bar - a bar not famed for its reggae music, but for the ring in the center of the ring where random drinkers could step in, put on some safety gear and throw down, each earning themselves a bucket filled with rum, Red Bull and whatever soft drink they fancy.  I wasn't quite in the mood for fighting but I was keen on watching.  The girls on the other hand weren't, so we went off to some beach bars where the typical Thai island music was being played loudly and extensively in your face.  What do I mean by Thai island music?  I mean both Avicii songs played six times a night in each bar, that stupid fucking "I've got a hangover, I've been drinking too much.." bullshit and that hideous blend of bad RNB and EDM - the American's attempt of making the piano house rave music with the grinding noises from Transformers injected into it to make it more "pumping".  Other bars would attempt to do something a little bit different but it it was always electronic music that in my eyes would require a serious amount of drugs to appreciate.  Not that I was for doing them on this island.  Whilst it may have increased my appreciation of the noise, I wouldn't want to waste good mood altering chemicals around a bunch of drunken young fools.

Our decision was to keep moving, going from bar to bar picking up buckets along the way.  I must have had a couple of them, opting for the more expensive Bacardi and Sprite combinations, shunning anything with the M150 or Thai Red Bull based concoctions.  Thai Red Bull, or Kratingdaeng as it's known here isn't carbonated.  It comes in these glass cough-medicine esque bottles and tastes as bad as the music played on those Thai beaches sounds.  It's a liquid representation of that gunk.  Initially I believed it was full of amphetamine like chemicals that guarantee it's existence being banned in Europe.

Apparently the Austrians allow it though.. Maybe they like battery acid based beverages.

We watched some more of the fire dancing that some of the bars put on.  Some of this stuff was quite impressive, but it starts to wear out its welcome the more you see it.  Especially when it becomes less about the spinning of fire sticks and more about the twirling of petrol soaked skipping ropes as overweight English men in their mid 30s, somehow still in Thailand jumping and landing with sand and jelly belly going in all directions.  They really tried to force this thing to keep going.  Two Thais would stand at either end of a pair of flaming skipping ropes swinging them with hope some fool would jump.  At some point on the way back from the toilet threw myself through the ropes and then went back to sit in my seat.  Maybe in high season there are scores of drunken buffoons getting involved in the potentially scar incurring jumping game but all of the bars running this activity seemed like they were scraping the bottom of the barrel for participants.  The night wasn't all that bad though.  The banter amongst the four of us was good and I took a liking to Shun, which she shared.  She was a good looking girl, whom I presumed was of North African descent originally but later found she was half Chinese, half Dutch.  Towards the end of the night when we were both good and drunk we ended up kissing, but that's as far as it went.  She seemed a little bit shy to kiss but confessed a dislike of public displays of affection, suggesting she was more affectionate in more private, intimate settings.  I should have taken my queue to invite her back to my room but I got a strange distrust of those thoughts.  I didn't want her friend to think less of her for being "slutty".  I don't know where those thoughts came from, especially as I said before, Dutch people seem to be less judgemental of others having fun as the Irish and the British are.  This exchange marked the end of the night, we all went to our separate places of accommodation.  

Along the way I bumped into one of the Northern Irish girls who I'd met on the boat.  We ended up having a debate which quickly increased in it's intensity.  She was trying to suggest that those who die of drug use, particularly those who were taking the green rolex pills in Northern Ireland.  Quickly she turned very nasty, questioning my education and as to whether I felt an intellectual superiority over her based on her assumption I went to Queen's University Belfast.  The fact is, I never went there.  I can only assume that she went to Northern Ireland's other university, University of Ulster, a former polytechnic which typically ranks much lower in UCAS tables, provoking many cultchie students (students from small countryside towns) to have insecurities about the strength of their academia.  With a snort of derision, feeling largely unaffected by her outraged outburst, I went off to bed and entered into an alcohol induced coma for about ten hours.  

Feeling Good

I like to think I'd earned the right to do as little as possible on that second day.  Two night buses in a row followed by a night of booze meant that I didn't have all that much energy for anything other than sitting on the beach with Shun and Nova.  The Magician joined us and we spent a good few hours lazing, occasionally going for a brief swim in the refreshing water.  I'd had to take a few Immodiums that day but still felt the need to be close to toilets.  I made a promise to my asshole that day, if it agreed to do solid shits, I'd agree not to drink anything out of buckets again.  A  promise I was half sincere about as was my hoop.  

There's not all that much to do on Phi Phi.  You can take a boat trip out to Maya Bay, famed for being the set of the Beach, but I didn't care too much for spending too much money on a boat ride with more ignorant tourists.  I didn't have any interest in snorkelling either, having only done it once when I was about eight I just pictured myself sucking up half the sea and spitting out the salt water after.  

As the day lurched on I found myself more and more hungover.  We got some food in a decent restaurant at the Magician's suggestion.  There are two "Papaya" restaurants on Phi Phi, obviously with the same management and they specialize in typical Thai food.  I got a really good Papaya salad and a Massaman curry and was completely stuffed.  I was amazed at the Magician's appetite.  It seemed like the guy could eat non-stop for days without feeling full.  Normally I reserve this feat for myself but with all the travelling I'd done over the week preceding, my stomach seemed to have shrunk.  It was hard getting food or alcohol in there.  So rather than force drunkenness upon myself, this was going to be one of those draining hangover evenings.  I'm not sure if I've told you before, but my hangovers often don't start until mid afternoon and slowly intensify over the course of the evening, becoming a bigger and bigger drain on my energy.  I might endure a deep existential crisis, questioning why the fuck I was doing what I was doing, or why I haven't made it as an actor/writer/venture capitalist yet and once that settles in, attitude of mellowing melancholia pervades.  That's kind of what happened that night after we ate.  The Magician had to go off and take care of his businesses which he owns in America but runs away from home, so I was left with Shun and Nova.

Whilst I still liked Shun, I didn't feel the need to make a move on her that night.  I'm not sure if I had the energy for anything.  We went to a bar where I drank a solitary beer and beat them at Connect 4 several times before I was done for the night.  My one regret about this evening was that I had a kind of argument with Nova.  She spoke about how so many people on Facebook were posting articles about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict but they knew nothing about it.  She insisted one side was as bad as the other.  I disagreed and snapped at her, telling her that Israel seemed bent on committing a slow and punishing act of genocide against Gaza.  Perhaps I was right, but I realize how ignorant I am about the ongoing affair.  It's a part of the world I've never been near and every time I read something which would affirm my beliefs, I'm given something contradictory.  I don't feel informed enough to sustain an argument but yet I felt infused with a fervor to correct her.  She needed to know about the tanks rolling into the refugee shelters.  She needed to know about the UN condemnation and she was a fool for not doing so.  I don't know what I was trying to achieve but looking back on my mentality, it was one of self-righteousness and of a completely condescending tone.  I'm angry less about what I said, than the way I said it.  Though we parted on reasonably good terms, I still felt a sense of shame.  They went off to party some more on the beach, I walked back to my room and mused about leaving the next day, two nights on the island seemed sufficient.  

Did I manage to leave though?

Next.. Phi Phi Part Two