Another new experience...

Hello again,

Well, I've done a fair few interesting things in my times on the road, but this would have to be the first time I've ever been in a country when it has experienced a coup d'etat. All a bit weird seeing the news from Bangkok last night, especially as, in true backpacker style, most of the farangs here were far more interested in dancing and getting drunk than what was going on (a lot of them didn't realise until today that anything had happened, and some of them still seem rather confused at the concept that the military's taken over the government).

This all made for rather a strange end to an awesome day, in which I gave in once again to my growing fondness for SCUBA. This was helped by absolutely perfect weather (bright sunshine, little to no swell, and great underwater visibility), and led to two of my more memorable dives, largely due to the fantastic marine life. We saw a couple of turtles, a leopard shark, three octopi, a moray eel, at least 3 reef sharks and, of course, shedloads of tropical fish and coral. What's more I didn't come close to panicking once, which is a healthy development.

I then had dinner at the remarkably cheesey "007" restaurant in town (no prizes for guessing the theme), where I watched the unbelievably cheesey film Stealth (this makes Top Gun look like an ultra-realistic docudrama) - as so often in Thailand, many of the cafes and restaurants show DVDs in the afternoon/evening as a way of drawing in the punters. The bars tend to have things like fire-shows (people swinging poi balls or staves with the ends set on fire) or muay thai boxing for the same purpose.

And that's pretty much the way life is here on Ko Phi Phi. People lounge on the beach by day, or dive, or do snorkelling trips (or cliff-jumping, for the clinically insane), then go out and party at night, and ignore most of what goes on back in the real world (apart from the sports). At any rate, it looks like I won't be going up to Bangkok this weekend as I'd planned - everything seems pretty close to under control at the moment, but I'm gonna give it a few more days before I run the gauntlet through the capital.

Hope all's well with all of you! Take care and have fun,

Pat