Thoughts from the Side of the Road (in Hua Hin Thailand)

Hello from Hua Hin Thailand! Stop the funeral preparations - I'm not quite dead yet. I'm a week and a half into my Thailand/Malaysian holiday, and having a great time. This update will have to be short, as the last thing I want to be doing is sitting in front of a computer on the side of the road. However, here are some of the basic details so far ...

To date, I've spent some time in the following places:

• Bangkok (a bigger, dirtier, noisier Asian city than Taipei - didn't care for it too much)
• Pattaya (a small, beach resort town that is overcrowded with fat German and other middle aged European men, there for the sole purpose of carousing with young Thai girls - disgusting)
• Kanchanaburi (the home of the famous "Bridge Over the River Kwai" and the "Death Railway" -- some incredible natural beauty in an area that saw some 100,000+ people die in the building of a railway)
• Hua Hin (where I currently am sitting. A small city on the east coast, right on the Gulf of Thailand (Pacific Ocean). Haven't been here long enough to see anything but the white sand beaches, mountains not far in the distance, and feel the warm warm water!)

Activities have included some swimming, some hiking, some motorcycle driving, some socializing, some beer drinking, etc. Basic Thailand stuff. I've taken the following modes of transportation:

• airplane (KLM - Dutch for blonde hair)
• taxi cab (Thai's like to have fun with tourist money)
• tuk-tuk (a 3-wheeled taxi combo of a motorcycle and a car -- also see taxi)
• motorcycle taxi (helmetless fun)
• motorcycle (I've rented one in a few places, and will do it again. Cheap, great way to see this place!)
• klong boat (Bangkok has canals - dirty, smelly canals. They also have boats that travel around them - beats the smelly roads, if by nothing else time!)
• kayak/canoe (paddled down the River Kwai)
• bus (lots of them all over the country - cheap and all round good)
• train (open air rail riding fun)

All in all, I've been doing very well. Haven't seen or done anything in particular that stands out far beyond the rest of my life (well, I did see some pretty strange things in the red light districts of Bangkok, but I don't feel that this is the time or place to mention them) but I've done lots of fun things, and the time is quickly flying by. In just over a week I'll be on a small island off the east coast of Malaysia, preparing for a scuba course. Although my swimming has drastically improved since my pre-University days (must have been that mandatory swimming course!), it still isn't great. However, I've been told by many people that swimming skills are all that important for scuba diving. Doesn't really make sense for the uninitiated, but, I'll have to take their word for it.

That's it from the east coast of central Thailand. Off to sit down, put my feet up, and a few beers down. While I'm doing that, I'll chow down some seafood. I never liked seafood before coming to Thailand ... it hasn't taken much fresh seafood to change that. I am sincerely happy to be where I am right now. What is next after Hua Hin? Destination unknown.