My cardboard-coloured dreams

Day 9 - Chiang Mai
Our last full day of holiday was spent in Chiang Mai. We were scheduled to go on a longtail boat ride but our day had a rather bizarre start: the boat jetty was right next to a small but very beautiful local temple and as it was the (deceased) king's birthday, it was a national holiday. The temple was very busy and had been decorated with ribbons and flowers and lots of people were lighting candles outside. When we came back, people were releasing fish into the river (you can buy a big bag full of fish and frogs and turtles) and letting birds out of cages (it's a Buddhist thing).

( Back to the mountains! )

Day 5 - Sukothai
On 1st December I woke up at Sukothai Heritage Resort, stepped outside into the sunshine and enjoyed looking at the beautiful pools full of lotus flowers, hanging orchids and dragonflies. What a wonderful way to start December! We boarded our bus and set off for Sukothai Historical Park, a set of absolutely stunning ruins framed by pools full of bright pink lotus blossoms. We had the option of travelling around the site by bicycle or motor transport but as it was so hot we chose motorised and got chauffeured around on some sort of reverse rickshaw - motorbike at the back for the driver and seats on the front for us! At the park instead of lots of towering stupa, we saw giant Buddha statues set amongst columns and highly decorated stonework covered in carvings of dancers and devotees. A couple of really rather grand standing Buddhas were so gigantic they had walls built around them which I assumed were to hold them up. It sort of gave the impression that they were standing in cupboards though! This was the first capital of the kingdom of Siam, so an important place and a completely different style. It was also the only place we were able to go inside a stupa - and although a little small and dungeony, still interesting to finally look up and see the wooden structures supporting the tower interior.

( We visit some farms, meet a hill tribe and feed some monks... )

So yeah. I went to Thailand on holiday by myself (Mike didn't have enough leave and I had loads of TOIL to use up). As I can't speak or read Thai and didn't really have any time to plan what I wanted to do in any kind of detail (but wanted to do more than just sitting on a beach), I decided to book a package deal and settled on a trip with Kuoni, who offered one with lots of variety on some very do-able dates. It's not what I would normally do, but it was about all I had the energy for...

Kuoni were actually really great. They sent me an itinerary with vouchers in for all of my hotels and the details of all of all my flights and basically sorted everything out for me from the moment I arrived in Bangkok. I was really impressed with their service and would definitely recommend them: I worked out that the difference in doing the tour with them and by myself roughly equated to £800 - but that was easily recuperated in transfer, travel, efficiency and time saving!

( Buckle up kids, this is a long one! )

Here's an interesting thing from Dr. Steve Jones (he's an amazing guy and knows lots of cool stuff).

"For dyslexics, there is an unfathomable fit between how a word is written and how it sounds. English spelling (which makes dyslexics feel like ghoti out of ghoti, or fish out of water - the fish with 'gh' as in rough, 'o' as in women, 'ti' as in nation; and the water with the same letters but as in plough, cord and tin) makes no sense.

Italian is much more logical. The Dantean 'Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura...'both sounds and look better than 'In the midway of this our mortal life, I found myself in a gloomy wood...'

The forty distinct sounds in English can be spelled in over a thousand ways. Italian is more economical in its utterances, with just over twenty-five sounds and a mere thirty three ways to put them on paper. Italy has, a a result, only about half as many dyslexics per head as does England, and Italian children learn to read their logical language well before their anglophone cousins."

So there you go. If you're dyslexic, try Italian.

*is proud*

I have just finished reading this book. It's amazing. A huge mix of interesting things collected by this guy who has essentially travelled around the world being all cool and down with the kids. He writes like Tim Westwood speaks but he's been to a lot of amazing (and scary) places and talked to a lot of crazy, influential people.

Yeah, it's got Banksy and Obey and the nems you would expect, but also Benjamin Zephaniah, Paul Hartnett, the KLF and a whole heap of talented young people doing interesting stuff.

I have about a billion websites to check out now...

Nowadays, I use LJ quite a lot to syndicate blogs and make it easier to see the cool stuff I enjoy looking at. I've set up (and pilfered) a fair few feeds over the last few months so here are some of my favourites (I like Hyperbole and a Half too, but you all already read that!)

gothiccharmsch - Pretty things and pictures of goth related stuff
hautexmacabre - Mostly clothes of a goth type nature
nowthisisgothic - Photos from the 1980s of - you guessed it - goth type people (Empty because I just set it up!)

marriedtoseafee - Old engravings with funny captions
myfirstdict - Excellent 50s style subversive picture dictionary
nataliedee_syn - Cute and amusing cartoons
postsecret - Anonymous secrets on postcards
rmntcllyapclypt - One of the most gorgeously illustrated web comics in a long while
theoatmealrss - 'How many otters could you hit with a shoe?' etc
tooth4dinner - Wobbly little cartoon people living sad little lives

sweetstation - New favourite addiction! Weird art from around the world
toxeldotcom - Amazing inventions
welshview - Weird stuff from across the web
hideyourarms - Awesome t-shirts, amazing deals. Can be post heavy.

Anyone else got any faves they'd like to share? I always have time for pretty pictures and silly jokes...

This is definitely worth the read. An amazing story about some admirable people. :)

I have a magic credit card. I was shopping online today and something very strange happened...

I was merrily buying things to assist my nice postlady in her daily exercise when I got to one of those card verifaction things. I entered my password. There was an error. I realised it was the wrong password and entered the right one. Another error. Perhaps I mis-typed. I tried again. Nope. I clicked 'Forgotten Password' and entered all my details.

Computer says no.

'Some of your details have been entered incorrectly and do not match our records. Please try again.'

I tried again.

'You are clearly a fool who does not understand the internet. Stop mashing the keyboard and call this number.'

So I called the number. Nothing for it as the verification thing wouldn't do anything any more. Nice bank man asked me for my card details. Then asked me again. And again.

Apparently, the security number on the back of my card isn't the number it ought to be. This means my card (which I only use to buy things online and have been using to buy stuff from places like Amazon, John Lewis, Zavvi and Play in the last few weeks) suddenly won't work any more.


Nice Bank Man was totally confused as to how this could have happened and didn't know what to do.

So now I have to take the card into the bank to prove that they are wrong and I can actually read three numbers in the right order without getting them completely and utterly wrong. (Because the security details on the card suddenly don't match the details on file the bank can't accept that I am me over the phone and give me a new card the normal way.)

Bonkers.