i am prone to bouts of emotional pappery, just look at the final entry i made before leaving south-east asia a million years ago. full of the gusto and optimism of the travel victim. my time on the road is quite pleasing and i'm learning so much about myself, surely my sick life has been made all better and nothing but confident strivings will follow. no more playing computer games and smoking weed all night, lounging about in my own internal squalor made tangible by my immense laziness. no, that will not happen. i like to think of myself as having artistic potential, so i will act accordingly and produce something of creative merit. a friend recently quoted a prophet who spoke of the love song thus : " a lifeline thrown out to the galaxies by a drowning man ". whether it be a love song or any other kind of artistic endeavour, i believe this sentiment perfectly encapsulates what i am increasingly seeing as nothing short of the ultimate duty of every man, woman and child; namely, to make some kind of worthwhile connection with the unfathomable wellspring of divinity that, to the right kind of eyes, is the undercurrent lapping beneath everything. and nothing.
the longing, the yearning for a more complete life. the bitterness at findng out that it can't be attained. surrounded by emptiness, full of nothingness. death awaits us. it terifies me, it truly does when i think ( as i often do these days ) of the possibility that i might die any day now. all the tears and mourning of such a young life taken away to heaven so 'prematurely'. such potential he had, whole life ahead of him. nothing to show for it.what was he like? oh, he was into his music and his booze. y'know,the usual. such a pity.

i remember i used to hate hearing people talk of how they wanted to 'make their mark' on this world before departing. why bother?, i would say. just come in, have a look around, buy some souvenirs and then piss off. why do you want to exert some kind of influence on proceedings? I still don't trust the reasons behind most people's desire to leave a legacy, but i am beginning to understand that it doesn't need to be a megalomaniacal ego-assertion buzz. i see now that this ability we have to turn all the squiggly goo inside our heads into an expression of the creative force is most wonderful, and needs further exploration. what is it the artist tries to decipher, and why does he feel it neccessary to do so? isn't it simply because he can and he has no idea why this is so? open the box and see what comes out. it might be fucking ugly and it might leave a foul stench. it might not.

so why is it that i still haven't embarked upon that courageous path of self discovery i so bullishly outlined those millions of years ago as i was about to share a last meal of fresh seafood with rob before heading home from my seven-month-long asian misadventure? why am i still frustrated by my own laziness and ineptitude, still smoking weed all night and playing computer games? the answer perhaps lies in the fact that my trip was seven months long before i had even left ireland, whereas rob is still hurtling through the unknown some twenty months later. i'll try a bit of the universe, but not much. have to be home by teatime, you see.

this will be continued.

eventually.

It has just passed three am on friday morning . I am sitting in my warm , candle-scented bedroom drinking some cold wheat extract and smoking some of the finest THC I have ever encountered . Just under an hour ago I ate ten Irish 'Liberty Cap' mushrooms, enough to administer a notable dosage of psilocybin , the funky drug that occupies the space between neurons in the brain and , having found the correct one , penetrates and causes them to transmit information in an abnormal way . The little marmalade jar to my right says sixteen more of the little wonders lie within .
The music is Everything Everything , a live Underworld ensemble. The perfect music for this stage of the trip , methinks .

I decided within about ten minutes of taking the mushrooms that I would try to detail some of the phenomena as they occur throughout the journey . I don't know for how long I'll be able to keep my attention fixed on one enterprise while swaths of my identity battle it out in an ethereal playground, all dancing with the lust of a caged animal been freed . I have to keep stopping and sinking into the gorgeously inviting depths of the music. Underworld are masters of the live dance spectacle . They reel you in with thumping , hypnotic beats and synth effects. Then they slow the pace and make sweet moves towards your central nervous system with echoed vocals and intricate meshes of high-hats and keyboard bits before plunging you back into the girded loins of their drum machine where they hold you in painful anticipation for a moment or two before delivering you back to the raging beats that sucked you in at the beginning.

Dose two has just been administered and it is becoming extremely difficult to focus for sustained periods of time . The bodily effects are similar to what I imagine morphine to be. A slight tingle is perceptible running along the spinal chord and massaging it as it goes. The mental effects are much harder to describe. There is a kind of lightness to the brain , as if a weight has been taken off its mind . I know from experience that when I take enough of these babies , my head feels completely empty , and I can detect a breeze flowing through the avenues vacated by thought and emotion and positivity and negativity and everything else. I dont think I have enough to get me there, but I know for sure that anywhere I do end up will have been worth visiting .

I love taking this drug , it baffles me how something this fun and educational can exist, quite frankly . They hold a very tenuous position in the ecological framework , exisiting naturally for only a very short period of time . I go picking every year around september or october on top of the Sugarloaf mountain in Wicklow and often more than one excursion is neccessary to get a reasonable haul as it is impossible to predict with certainty when they will pop up . They only survive for days once they have arrived . Whenever I take these mushrooms , I feel that they are my reward for trudging through the wet and windy fields fifty miles from my home on a whim that they might have shown .

The music has switched to Psyence Fiction by UNKLE , another fine blend of the intricate and the exploding . I am beginning to question my methods for embarking on this diary . I suspected that the focused attention might begin to wear thin . I also suspect that to take a break might be the end of the affair . I have just noticed that I can at will view reality in slow motion . Now I need a piss . I have just come back from staring at myself in the bathroom mirror for an undisclosed period of time . I usually do this when on mushrooms , it is utterly compelling to watch up close the subtleties of my skin structure or stare into the hidden chapters behind the eyes . This time I amused myself by peering into the pupil of my reflected eye and trying to see into the tiny eye of the face reflected in it . The face was my face , evidently . To watch yourself smile and frown or do anything or do nothing at all is fascinating stuff on mushrooms . I like to do it in normal life from time to time also . It keeps one grounded . The music has stopped . In actual fact it has been silently playing a random track from Usher - my music library still has some of my brother's unwanted crap by lying pretentious wankers leftover from a file swap . Perhaps it knew I didn't want to hear it. Thank you computer .

There are periods where absolutely anything may be found funny . I wonder what it would be like to attempt a stand-up comedy set on these things . I think I could be relaxed and groovy enough to wing it , but its easy to think . I have been thinking recently of what it would take to do a stand-up show . I put it on a mental list of things I want to do before I die along with learning to breakdance and something else .
The music is The Velvet Underground and the line is " there are problems in these times , but wooooh , none of them are mine ". How apt .
In truth , almost anything can be found to be apt to any encounter on mushrooms . At the very least , everything is worth investigating to the fullest so it can be ascertained just how apt it is .

It is now just after six in the morning , but I wouldn't dream of going to bed for another while yet . On Your Own by the Verve followed by a random mix of the Super Furries .Ice Hockey Hair .
The wheat beer has run out and its onto the Kristal version . The other one took a distinctive shape when you poured it into a glass . To be honest , the first thing that came to mind was the thought that it looked like semen deposited into a glass of urine . Well , to be brutally honest , I only thought of adding the bit about the glass of urine just there . Initially I thought only of semen .

I think it will be good to do a follow-up on this tomorrow because it is impossible to describe what the mind undergoes as eloquently as is required whilst undergoing it.

The final dose has been administered and its all up to the weed now . I have always found that both marijuana and mushrooms compliment each other superbly . The weed allows you to go deeper into the gaps created by the mushrooms and explore the visual aspect in greater detail . Which I think I will do right away by viddying some Escher or Dali online . Back in a mo . Supergrass . Late in the day . The first picture I study is a first-person visual of the artist (Escher) looking at his reflection in a polished sphere . It reminded me of the episode with the pupil .
The second is a close-up of an eye , with the suggestion of layers hidden in the depths of the eye's history , with the image of a skull visible in the pupil .

Two interesting quotes from the Salvador Dali website before I've even seen a picture :

" What is a television apparatus to man , who has only to shut his eyes
to see the most inaccesible regions of the seen and the never seen ,
....to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary baghdad's of
his dreams to rise from the dust "

This one had and still has me in stitches . .

" Every morning when I wake up , I experience an exquisite joy -
the joy of being Salvador Dali - and I ask myself in rapture :
what wonderful things this Salvador Dali is going to accomplish
today. "

Why should it make me laugh when it is nothing more than a positive affirmation of selfhood from an accomplished man ? The imagined tone of the man when he said it , the utter defiance of insecurity . I think its hilarious and noble .

I believe the first signs of fatigue are beginnig to show although I doubt I'll be able to sleep for a while yet . I'm still enjoying things immensely but I think I will call an end to this recorded rambling and go the rest of the trip solo as it were . Why say 'as it were' ? Why not say 'as it is' if thats what I mean .

Anyway , some belgian chocolate cookes and a lemon curd yoghurt await . Its always important to bolster one's defences when coming towards the end of the trip .

Goodnight and Good Morning .

Strange feeling this, to be typing my final journal entry that is to be written in the plush, air-conditioned comfort of a south-east asian internet cafe . Many , many hours have been spent sitting in this position either penning my thoughts into this journal or , more frequently , sending emails to my friends and family back home . And now the time has come to finally see them all again for real . Mixed emotions ; slight giddiness at the thought of laying eyes for the first time in months on some of the people who have been in my thoughts throughout the entire trip , equalled if not completely overshadowed by my reticence to leave behind the life that I have discovered to be possible out here , or indeed anywhere away from the monotony of my life as I see it in Dublin.

This will have to be resumed in a few minutes as I am being forced to move to a different internet cafe due to the disruptive level of the music being blared here in the "Groove Shack" just around the corner from my guest house. I complained recently of finding it difficult to complete a journal entry unhindered by the nonsensical chirpings of asia's latest pop tart being blasted inconsiderately from the speakers. This time ( I'm sorry Grace ), it's actually music that I would normally love to be listening to - Bright Eyes - but its impossible to concentrate....I have to go.....

*********************************************************************************

Ah , thats much better. All i have to contend with in here are the three women who work here chattering away loudly and giggling every few minutes at a funny jingle they've found to add to their mobile phone ring-tone collection . Hilarious stuff indeed , but at least I can think a little more clearly . Now all I have to do is figure out just what I wanted to say . I'm sure I will leave out a lot of detail that I wish to convey , and i may even become sentimental and start talking drivvel before long , but I don't have much time to perfect this one . I leave Bangkok in a few hours , and before heading to the airport , I have arranged to have one final dinner of fresh seafood barbeque with my friend Apple , and Rob , who I unexpectedly bumped into earlier today as he was shopping around for some of the essentials he'll be needing during his three-month volunteer-teaching course , which he begins on Monday. I thought I'd already said my goodbyes to him when we parted after our grand old time on the Perhentians , but fate has granted us a few more hours together . Sure we may even squeeze in one more beer or two ,who knows ?

When I left Ireland seven months ago , I did so with the intention of adding more colour to my life , which in my opinion had become dull , listless and no fun to live . I know that sounds terribly dramatic , and those people who know me the best will know that in reality, I probably found it easier to cope with those feelings than some of my peers may have ... I was rarely overly depressed and I found I could take most things in my stride quite comfortably . I have always enjoyed spending time with those people who I feel I can trust and who know more about me than anybody else , but I always felt that what I lacked was a sense of real independence . I can cook for myself , wash my own clothes and do all the rest of the day-to-day stuff that makes up the practical side of living , but I despised being alone and I constantly craved the company of my friends to the point that I would find myself practically living in Robbie & Baz's flat until it was time to make the trip back to Wicklow and to my brother's little mini-mart to earn enough cash to keep my belly tickled and my brain dulled with alcohol . We had fun most of the time , but I'm sure they'll also admit that there were times when it felt like we were simply going throught the motions , playing poker and computer games to fill the time and never really endeavouring to be as creative as our vast potential demands . We have , as does everybody who wishes to realise it , a unique opportunity to take life by the balls and mould it to our desire . Unhappiness will undoubtedly come , but to allow it to fester is a crime of the utmost gravity .

I believe that if I am to be happy in my life in Ireland , I need to make some fundamental changes to my approach to living . Perhaps it has been the teachings I have learned at the meditation retreats , perhaps it's just the realisation that I have found happiness to be possible most of the time simply by getting off my arse and leaving behind the comfortable misery of my stagnant city life , but I realise the urgency of my situation more clearly now . Things aren't going to get found unless I pursue them . If I want to make an album , then why not start it today ? If I want to get into photography , then at least begin saving for a camera . I have been far too lazy for far too long and ironically , it has taken 40 days of doing absolutely nothing in Thai monastery's to realise that . Not to mention the six months of living in jovial insouciance , as I learned how to really relax while strolling around the tranquil towns and cities of this magical region . My last few days have been spent in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand , and I thought every day of how much I want to live there on a permanent basis . Book-shops and cafes predominate , the pace is deliberately dreamy and as soon as I stepped oot of the taxi which took me to the town centre from the airport , I knew I had made the right decision in coming back for a second stint . It has been my favourite place to have visited I think , but in truth I could quite easily set up a home in many of the destinations I travelled to or stumbled upon during my time here . Lazy Luang Prabang in southern Laos comes immediately to mind. The nine days I spent there with Rob still rank as some of the most enjoyable I have ever experienced, and apart from the three days which got lost in a kaleidoscopic valium / opium delirium , I will never forget that place.

Vietnam, with its omnipresent coastline and mind-blowing sea-food was an intoxicating affair to be sure . The Bia Hoi stands to be found on the roadsides in Hanoi and Saigon deserve a mention I feel . Many happy hours were spent sitting on tiny plastic stools alongside locals and back-packers sipping the cheapest beer in the world ( 33 cent for a two litre jug ! ) and watching the action from the world cup on one of the tv's dragged out into the street so everybody could have a look . Hoi An , in central Vietnam , where I was offered a job , some accomodation and a vietnamese wife by the friendly family who ran the only late-night bar in the town will stick with me for a long time too.....

I could carry on like this all night where it not for my dinner appointment which I must be on time for . I think you may get the idea of what I'm trying to say even though I have been in a rush for this one.



Goodbye south-east asia , I will be sad to wake up tomorrow and not view your landscapes . But perhaps I will retain what you have taught me , and will see a bit of you even when all around me are grey buildings and even greyer skies above.

Thank you.

I wanted to write an emotional epic of an entry today, to say goodbye to south-east asia and chronicle briefly the experiences I have encountered over the past seven months. It will however have to wait until tomorrow when I'll have nothing to do in Bangkok while I wait to fly home. Today, I've been saying goodbye to people and reading some of my friends' Bebo sites that they've set up while I've been away. It seems a lot of them have been busy little bunnies this past while and a lot of fun has been had. I can't wait to catch up with them all. Baz, I was receiving some strange looks from people in the net cafe as I tried my best not to roll around on the floor and poop my pants while reading your ( Mitch's ) site. Good work.

I will be writing tomorrow......definitely.

Just to let anybody who may be reading know that myself and Rob are currently hanging out on the Perhentian Islands just off the coast of Malaysia, and will be here for at least four more days. Rob may be here slightly longer as he has booked a five-day diving course which begins on the day that I fly back to Thailand.

These Islands are among the most visually delectible I have ever encountered, and as far as I can tell, there are a maximum of one hundred tourists here, which is making the experience an extremely relaxed and pleasurable one.

The only downside is the extortionate cost of using the internet, which is preventing either of us from writing a lenghty journal entry while here. So, just in case you may be worrying (God forbid) that either of us were caught up in the violent scenes which took place in southern Thailand over the weekend, where radical muslim extremists planted two bombs in Hat Yai killing two people, you can rest assured. We are safe, although I had been forced to stop off in Hat Yai the day before the bombings, which is a little disconcerting. I shall be flying back to Thailand in a few days to avoid any further shenanigans.

Bye......

Well Hello World, its both good and bad to see you again.
It's been three days since I emerged from the serene forest idyll of Wat Suan Mokkh, where I attended a silent, ten day meditation retreat. Since leaving, I have been staying at the only hotel in the nearby village of Chaiya - the town that never wakes up - which is run by a well travelled and extremely accomodating local couple. There aren't many Thai people I have met that would ever have left the country, but there are photos on the hallway wall showing the couple posing at landmarks of Australia, New Zealand and several European countries including Switzerland, France and Bulgaria. Its hard to believe that such extravagant holidays could have been financed solely from the profits received at the hotel which is never full, but they managed them somehow. The woman is the one who works most of the day (not uncommon in this part of the world), and she is always smiling and polite when I greet her or ask her for some information, which only added to the sense of ease I felt when I strolled around this horizontal hinterland. One could write a book here quite easily. Which is more than can be said for trying to write a journal entry in any of the internet cafe's which perpetually blast out the trashiest of asian pop music on the speakers, making it virtually impossible to concentrate fully on the words, but instead wash one away in a cheesy ocean of superficial love and happiness, driving any sane man to the brink of despair. I can empathise completely with Rob, who had a good old rant about such meaningless media in his journal entry of yesterday. We must stick together, brothers and sisters and be strong.

I've just booked my train ticket to Hat Yai, a small but busy town very close to the Malaysian border, which will see me arrive at about six am tomorrow morning. I have been reliably informed that from there, I can easily arrange a bus or train to Kota Baharu, where I will meet up with Rob for the first time in about a month and take a trip to one of the neighbouring islands to relax and share stories before I have to re-enter Thailand for the last time, and eventually fly home on the 28th of September. I will be among the first travellers to fly out of Bangkok via the new airport which opens on the same day, and I have been advised to arrive a few hours in advance to ensure that no problems arise which could scupper my flight plan. For some unfathomable reason, the Thai government has decided to completely shut down the old airport on the same day as opening the new one, thereby transferring all flights to the new location, leaving passengers at the mercy of whichever administrators were assigned the job of making the transition a smooth one. It may yet turn out to be one final adventure before flying home, albeit an unwanted one, and I will not be surprised if there are delays or cancellations to sit through before I finally board.

The nondescript wailings from the radio speakers have, for the time being, ceased, so I must use this golden period of silence diligently to set down my thoughts and experiences of the retreat, which is what I really came in here to write about.

Suan Mokkh is a forest monastery, decided upon by the venerable Buddhadasa Bhikkhu as the perfect location to expound his sometimes controversial teachings of the Dhamma, due to the basic natural state of the surroundings. The retreat took place on the opposite side of the motorway, roughly a one kilometre walk down a narrow dirt road, in the International Dhamma Heritage Centre. It was founded almost exclusively for attendance by western tourists, but is now used by quite a lot of Thai's who were curious as to why so many godless capitalists would make the trek every month to learn about something they considered to be an essentially Thai practice. Buddhadasa Bhikkhu had a vision of spreading the teachings of the Dhamma as widely as possible, and to people who he deemed needed to hear it the most. For this reason, he set up a centre which was aimed at westerners, and one doesn't need to think for too long to figure out why this was so. Western society is built upon the foundation of the personal ego, which is the very thing that meditation and Buddhism in general aims to negate through careful introspection and concentrated understanding. The ego, so say the Buddhists, is nothing more than a series of fluctuating desires and beliefs, which arise and cease according to the needs and wishes of the 'person' who is experiencing them. It is not permanent, and it is not to be relied upon as a general guide as to why people behave the way they do. It is a pretty radical statement to make, to claim that the one thing people wake up believing in every day is no more than a fantasy created by the human mind for the purpose of feeling secure and sheltered in a dangerous and gaping existence.

You meet a stranger one day who captivates you with his charm and wit, and you set about having a fascinating discussion with him, and when you part you say to yourself " I can't wait to meet him again ", believing as we do that we will undoubtedly encounter the same character. If we happen to come across that person while he is having a stressful day, however, or he is simply not in the mood to speak with us, we may become disillusioned with this 'new' person that he has become without consulting us, and we may rightly wonder what it was that so captivated us about him in the first instance. Nothing strange has happened here; we have simply taken the more ebullient, extroverted aspect of the persons make-up to be the actual person and discarded his right to be a little pre-occupied or downright bored as an inconvenient trait which he should do his best to overcome so that we can enjoy his company every time we meet him.
That is a very basic example of the dissatisfaction that people feel every day of their lives when they encounter situations that are deemed to be undesirable, as we strive to arrange our lives in a secure and controlled manner, free from the negative aspects of living that we feel we could easily live without. What Buddhism aims to teach people is that there simply is NO security to be found in this world, NO permanence to cling to and NO opportunity to break free from the circle of suffering unless we take the time neccessary to develop insight into the true nature of things, and learn how to accept the impermanence of all things so we can see the futility in clinging to them.

First of all, what is Dhamma?
Dhamma, or Dharma, is the name given to the teachings of the lord Buddha. It is, in essence, the reality that he came to realise through his six-year-long search for wisdom by means of meditation and mindful living. It is described by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu in a number of his lectures as having four parts :

1....Dhamma is Nature
2....Dhamma is the Law of Nature
3....Dhamma is our duty towards the Law of Nature, and
4....Dhamma is the consequences of acting out our duty towards the Law of Nature

For example, somebody who arrives at a conclusion that the worldly possesions they own can never deliver them real happiness is said to have seen Dhamma, as he has realised the transitory nature of such material objects. It is, put simply, the realisation that the Law of Nature disallows any fixed or permanent entities, as everything to be found in Nature is subject to the endless cyle of Birth, Old Age, Sickness and Death.
I read somewhere on the monastery grounds that Dhamma should be considered as nothing less than absolute Truth, and can be described as the Buddhist 'God', since the Law of Nature is the closest thing to a divine creator that can be found in the Buddhist scriptures. There is no belief in a heavenly father, or indeed in a 'soul' which will carry on in some form once we have shuffled off this mortal coil - a system of beliefs which intrigues me now as much as it terrified me when I first came to grasp its meaning. Until I learned more about Buddhism, and came to accept in principle some of its core teachings, I liked to entertain vague and useless notions of there being 'something' out there to believe in, although I was always hesitant to use the word God, not fully undestanding what a God might possibly be. But I have come to believe that this 'something' I spoke of had very few hours of contemplation behind it, and was in fact, nothing more than an unwillingness to entertain the possibility that we may just have come from nothing, a void to which we will return as our corpses lie rotting in the cold hard ground. We are nothing more than processes of nature, much the same as animals, plants and BMW's; our fate is intertwined with the inanimate as much as it is the animate, in that we will arise, flourish and eventually decay.

One of the most encouraging aspects of the entire retreat was the continual reiteration that when Buddhists speak of re-birth and past and future existences, it is important not to run away with wild and fanciful notions of bodily re-incarnation and life after death. Instead, it should be viewed with a more practical, reasoned understanding of ego re-birth which happens to most people more than a hundred times every day of their lives. Thats quite a lot of re-birth, and it is this endless cycle of suffering that Buddhism aims to offer salvation from, not some other-wordly, super-natural chain of uncontrollable events. It is best illustrated by way of an example.

Imagine waking up from a very pleasant string of dreams, in your comfortable bed on a freezing cold and wet Monday morning. As you slowly become more aware of your surroundings, the thought begins to dawn that you must get up soon to face the first work-day of the new week. You immediately begin to feel a slight discontentment with your lot, and may even curse the fact that you have to leave the security of your duvet just to go and earn enough money to pay the mortgage. It is not difficult to see that the person who woke up in a positive state of mind has been transformed into a new person who is feeling disgruntled and hard-done by. So you may decide to roll over and fall asleep again, just for another ten minutes of comfort. After finally getting out of bed and making your way to the bathroom, you find that it is already being used by somebody, and that they won't be finished for a considerable period of time. Now you may become angry that things aren't falling into place as you wish them too, and you may even realise that it was the extra ten minutes in bed which enabled the other person to take your place in the shower. This will most likely lead to feelings of rage and you will immediately be again 're-born' as an angry person and it is this angry person who must face whatever comes your way until some other external occurence changes your mood, at which point you will become whatever person the new conditions have forced you to become. This may go on and on for the entire day, with the result being that each time you react to external stimuli with either liking or disliking, you will be re-born as the 'self' who must then face whatever comes your way. If this theory is to be believed, then we can see what the Buddhists are getting at when they claim that there is no such thing as a permanent self. It is subject to the same laws as everything else in the universe, namely that:

1....Everything is Impermanent (Anicca)
2....Everything is Unsatisfactory (Dukkha), and
3....Everything is Non-Self (Anatta)

I spoke about the Buddhist idea of literal re-birth with a British Monk who lives at the monastery and takes part in the monthly retreats, giving Dhamma talks and basically ranting on about whatever he sees fit. When I asked him what his opinions were on the whole idea, he blurted out an exclamation of exasperation and merely said the word "Nonsense". Most of the people who take Buddhism seriously, come at it from an angle which is part-scientific, part-philosophical and part-religious. That some people are willing to delude themselves even further in believing that their body will be re-incarnated after death is nothing more than an unwillingness to tackle the problems their lives face NOW. There is no other time to face them. And he believed that such concerns should not impede people who are genuinely interested in furthering their mental and spiritual development. His name was Tan Dhammaviddhu, and I listened with great interest every time he spoke, for I believed that in his words were genuinely wise reflections on the human condition and the mess that we have made of our heavenly garden. The basic thrust of his talks was that all of our unhappiness stems from our unwillingness to accept that we live in a void. " There are no good or bad things in nature, there is only nature ", he would frequently say. And because we live in such a rampant,sexualised, computer-generated world, it is impossible for us to see the true nature of Nature. It just isn't interesting enough for us to pay any attention to - a truth that I can vouch for having spent ten days trying in vain to sit still and watch my breathing. Much more interesting to think of things that never happened or plan for those things that I would like to happen.

In much the same way as we eat food with MSG to beef up the flavour to our liking, we observe the world through a screen of mental MSG, loading it with conceptualised reality, which forever takes us away from the Truth and towards unhappiness. This is not to say, of course, that viewing the world in this way is not pleasant. On the contrary, it would be foolish of us to engage in an activity if we didn't believe that it was going to offer us satisfaction. It's just that the result of engaging with the world in this way will invariably lead to unhappiness in the long run, when the gloss has withered or faded away completely.

Compare a hollywood blockbuster, laden with computer-generated images, explosions, car-chases, sex and the like to a movie such as " Lost In Translation ", in which very little happens at all. There is no need for CGI, or overblown action scenes. The director, Sofia Coppola, even managed to refrain from having a single sex scene in the entire movie, which is something of a minor miracle these days. When I first saw the film, I was slightly taken aback by its simplicity, not really knowing what I could take from it, if anything at all. But further analysis led me to the conclusion that it's because the plot is so non-eventful that the film such a gem; it mirrors real life in a way that the hollywood blockbusters don't even attempt to. The guy doesn't get the girl (even though they fall in love), and the movie ends with them both still stuck in unhappy relationships, their brief and innocent love affair having come to its natural end.

One of the many ways that Tan Dhammaviddhu tried to describe what it is like to pierce the cosmetic sheen and see true reality was to quote a lyric from Donovan, scotland's answer to Bob Dylan who went on to set up his very own Zen Buddhist retreat on a small island off the coast of Scotland. Apparently he now resides in Ireland. The lyric was :

" First there is a mountain,
then there is no mountain,
and then there is "



Sounds like he may have smoked too many of the banana skins he refers to in his hit "Mellow Yellow". But Tan Dhammaviddhu was convinced that the man may actually have known something worth knowing when he penned that particular ditty. I still don't know which song it comes from but if anybody has read this far and has any ideas, I'd be most grateful.
So first, you're looking at a mountain in much the same way as you've always done, marvelling at the sheer size of it and allowing your mind to entertain the usual connotations of permanence and grandeur. This is what a mountain is, surely.
But then you see the mountain, without the conception of what a mountain is getting in the way. There is no thought of permanence or grandeur. There are no thoughts of any kind, there is only two eyes becoming conscious of a foreign entity, a mass of indefinable proportions, subject, like all else, to impermanence and destruction.
This state of mind won't last for very long, and within moments, we will be seeing the mountain as we have done every other time; thinking about what a mountain is at the same time as looking at it. Only enlightenment can guarantee us never returning to this state of affairs.
The song goes on to say :

" Caterpillar sheds its skin,
reveals the butterfly within "


Now, I'm not claiming for a moment that I have an understanding of this process beyond a merely intellectual one. I can understand in principle what he was getting at, but I have never had a visit from the Dhamma, so I really don't know anything about it. The closest I have come was during some of the more monumental mushroom trips that my mind opened out into, but thats another story altogether.

So, I have been waffling away for quite some time now, without actually speaking of the practical elements of the retreat, which is possibly all people wanted to hear in the first place. I just got a little side-tracked. Apologies.

The day began at four am, with me rising from my concrete slab and wooden pillow, having a quick scan around the room for any 'visitors' that may have found their way in during the night. Snakes and scorpions were to be found all over the grounds, so it was wise to be on the safe side before emerging from the relative safety of my mosquito net. I surprised myself by not having many problems with sticking to the schedule this time around. On the previous retreat I was so drowsy most of the time that I found it impossible to rise before 5.30 am, just in time for breakfast. But 4.30 was the latest I rose this time, and that was only on one occasion. After a quick blast of freezing water onto the face, I would make my way to the main meditation hall for the morning reading, which was performed by a different meditator every day. I decided to do one of the readings on day four, as I had never before done any public speaking, and I wanted to test myself. Apart from my certainty that everyone could hear my heart pounding furiously through the microphone, it all went off without a hassle.
Then there would be a half hour meditation before we took a short, mindful stroll down to the Yoga hall for ninety minutes of serious physical exertion. I thought I knew a thing or two about Yoga before attending the retreat, but I was sorely mistaken. One of the meditators that I spoke to on the final day said that although he had been practising Yoga for years, he had no idea we would be asked to perform such a rigorous routine. What with me being slightly masochistic though ( according to Rob ), I loved every minute of it. I wanted to be challenged on this retreat, and the Yoga was possibly the greatest challenge of all. I always felt placid and empty when we were done, the perfect state to be in for meditation.

At 7am there was a talk, usually just a meditation instruction or words of encouragement from the almost-dead Ajaan Poh. The man certainly has huge heart ; he was always full of praise for people who had taken time out of their comfortable lives to live like a monk, even if it is only for ten days. But at 74 years of age, and having been practising meditation for some fifty years now, he was virtually devoid of passion or character. Certainly, it was not his job to be charismatic, which isn't really a fault. I just found it difficult to listen to him for very long without drifting off into some reverie, or simply falling asleep momentarily. Having said that, the man could sit in the same posture for an entire day if it was required, so you must respect the power of his mind, if not his charm.

After breakfast of sloppy rice soup and a few bananas, it was time for some menial chores of sweeping and cleaning. As soon as these were complete, I could look forward to ninety minutes of free time, which I nearly always used to soak in the hot springs for a while, allowing my muscles to sink back into a relaxed position before taking on the rest of the day's meditation sessions. Which, by the way, there simply wasn't enough of. I think on average, we were given more free time than we were asked to meditate, which seems to defeat the purpose of a meditation retreat. Club Meditation I came to think of it as. I enjoyed the free time immensely, paddling my feet in one of the stunningly serene lakes, or simply walking around the arcadian grounds, thinking as little as possible. The trick is to turn the entire retreat into one long meditation, which can be done without sitting in uncomfortable positions for hours on end, simply by being mindful all of the time.
I could, of course, have meditated alone during my free time if I so desired, but on this retreat I found it more difficult to formally meditate than on the previous one. The last one was too dry, with no talks or Yoga whatsoever. But this one, in my opinion, had far too many talks with the result being that I found it impossible to digest all of the new information, while at the same time practise non-thinking. There was always some overlap; my mind would be sent racing by something I heard Tan Dhammaviddhu saying and that would be it for the afternoon. I would sit intellectualising and projecting, which is not meditating.
Still, there were times during the first and last two days, when I found I could sit for the entire hour without shifting position, and could watch my breath for longer periods than was previously attainable. There's just no way of predicting what will happen when you try to do nothing. Now it works, now it doesn't.

Then, lunch at 12.30 which was usually substantial and delicious. Three or four different curries would be prepared and served with brown rice and vegetables, all vegetarian, followed by delicious desserts of fruit and jelly soaked in soya milk. I didn't feel hungry once during the evenings.
After lunch, another break, followed by more meditation and an evening session of chanting at five pm which I got into in a way that I didn't expect to. We chanted in Pali (the language of the time of the Buddha), but there were english translations and a lot of them had rather powerful meanings about being wary of procrastination, and acting in the present etc. By the end of the retreat, I could chant some of them without the aid of the book, and there is at least one that I intend to turn into a song when I return home. Lots of bongo madness and whatnot, it sounds great in my head.

One verse from the chant entitled " Verses on a single night " would continually float into my head while I was having trouble meditating, or becoming tempted by the lure of an afternoon nap . Such temptations are so easy to indulge ; I know that I for one do it every day, and I suspect that most people are guilty to some degree. Not just taking naps here and there, but lots of things like having the second cup of coffee that you couldn't possibly need, or driving the car around the corner to buy some lightweight groceries. These things accumulate and become habit - and habit is ever so hard to break. The verse was :

" Effort is the duty of today ,
Even tomorrow, death may come ,
For it is beyond our power ,
To delay death and its great armies. "


Enough of the schedule, methinks its boring to write and most likely boring to read . What's far more interesting to write about is the mindset that one adopts when taking part in one of these retreats . Its hard to describe just how mush unjustified hatred I felt towards some of the other meditators, as my mind would desperately reach out for some feeling or emotion to latch onto as I tried to empty it of thoughts . I would be just sitting eating breakfast or lunch, not bothered by anybody else or their habits when all of a sudden I would catch a glimpse of somebody going back up for more food . " Who the fuck does he think he is, the fat, greedy, arrogant....." and so on until I would notice it and bring my attention back to my food . I developed a personal grudge against this one guy who would eat anywhere between eight and ten bananas every breakfast time, and stomp in and out of the chairs with a violent urgency as he made his third or fourth trip up to the food table to complete his mission . It lasted for days, and all the poor guy was doing was trying to set himself up with enough energy for the day . It turned out that he never ate much of the bland rice soup, which I can't blame him for, and so needed more than the ordinary portion of fruit . But reason doesn't come into these things; if your mind develops a grudge, it is bound to be borne out of irrational mental concoction.

The whole point of the retreat was brought home to me on the final day, when having finished his two bananas ( you'll notice that I was still counting right to the end ), he turned and looked at the table where the remaining fruit lay, hesitated for an instant before returning his gaze straight out in front of him, no doubt having come to the conclusion that he was merely acting on impulse and didn't need the extra food. I was overcome with a sense of pride for him, and realised that although it is a gradual process, evrybody who attended the retreat had become more mindful of their actions than they were upon arriving. Five minutes later, however, he stomped up to grab a couple more bananas, and almost knocked over his chair as he trudged back to devour them. But at least for that moment, I had made my peace with the banana-man, and all was right with the world.

Some of my more serious grievances were reserved for the few hippies and detox-seeking drama-queens that attended, and even though I risk being a little judgmental, I still believe that there is only so much one can take seriously. There was one girl there who called herself Rainbow and I almost feel that I need say no more, but I will. She would consistently lie down on the floor of the meditation hall, stretching out her arms and silently gyrate with a massive smirk on her face. She was being touched by god, or cleaning her aura no doubt and I found it just too much to bear at times. The icing on the cake came on the final night when people were given the chance to share their thoughts of the retreat and any interesting experiences that may have occurred. I said a few words myself, and I accept completely that some may have disliked what I said, or thought me to be slightly pretentious, but I tried to make sense as best I could, and I wasn't embarrassed when I had finished.
Our friend Rainbow was certainly not embarrassed as she floated up to the microphone and began :
" I believe we can all touch rainbows "...pause for a moment..
" They're our colours ".......
and so on for about five minutes. I can't remember most of what she said, but I wish her luck with the rest of her life, she may need it. The last I heard, she was off to Kho Phangan - the island of hedonism - to do some 'detox' with another of the meditators, Dale, a jewellery salesman from Hawaii. A more perfect match one could not imagine.

I have written this over two days, and I am now in Kota Bahru, Malaysia where I will meet Rob in the morning before we head of to one of the neighbouring islands to spend a few days before I head home. Now that Rob is back on the booze, albeit moderately, we certainly won't be doing any detox, but I'll let you know what we get up to.

If you've gotten this far, then I whole-heartedly thank you for reading. It can't have been easy. I'll keep it brief in future.

Bye for now.....

Well, the time has come for me to say goodbye to the outside world for another short spell of time, and I am relishing the prospect greatly. My last few days in Bangkok were a little strange. Anybody who has ever been there will know that it wouldn't be most people's idea of a permanent destination, and it certainly wasn't mine. However, having spent so long there, and making a good friend in Apple, I felt a little sad to leave. Restaurant and bar staff around the place were beginning to know what I might order on any particular day, and that is probably a sure sign that it is time to go....still, anybody who likes the theme tune from 'Cheers' will know that there is another way to look at it. Sometimes.

I arrived in Surat Thani this morning at about seven am, following a rough and uncomfortable train journey from Bangkok, which took some twelve hours. I like to travel by train, and the trains in Thailand are amongst the most comfortable in the world, I imagine. My bed was large, and at any other time I would have slept like a baby all the way down to here. This time though, I had to contend with a blinding headache for the entire trip, along with a general feeling of illness which was caused by my over-indulgent cocktailing on wednesday night. I don't know why I have developed a fondness for these noxious mixtures in the past while, but I'm pretty certain that I won't be carrying on the habit once I arive back in rip-off Ireland. Anyway, the result was that I woke at three am, and couldn't get back to sleep. Not the perfect preparations for today, but its what I got.

I had been due on wednesday to travel by bus to the Cambodian border town of Poi Pet in order to re-enter Thailand and receive a new thirty-day visa, but the prospect of a day spent at that casino resort rather daunted me, and when an alternative pesented itself, I jumped at the chance, even though I had already paid for my return bus ticket. I came through that border when I arrived here from Cambodia three weeks ago, and I couldn't imagine staying there for any longer than is absolutely neccessary. It is a tiny, dusty, menacing little town where policemen, gangsters and hookers from both Thailand and Cambodia gather to gamble in peace, exempt from the prohibition laws enforced in both countries, due to one of those convenient loopholes that only policemen, gangsters and hookers would know anything about.

The alternative that presented itself was to make my way down to the immigration bureau and ask for an extension of my current visa, which would have expired on the fifth of september. It was Apple who suggested the idea when I told her how anxious I was not to visit Poi Pet. I don't know why I had never been made aware of the possibility before, but after a couple of phonecalls, it was all arranged and I felt extremely relieved that all my dealings could be sorted without having to leave Bangkok. Things didn't turn out to be quite as simple as that though, as I was informed upon arrival that the maximum extension granted to foreigners is ten days, and that the cost is almost forty euro. I had wanted, and needed, at least thirty more days but there was nothing that could be done without first leaving Thailand. So, after an initial bout of sulking, when I sat on the steps outside the bureau in the unforgiving afternoon sun considering my next move, I regrouped, and realised that if I was serious about attending the retreat, my only option was to pay the inflated cost to extend my visa until the fifteenth, and catch a train to Malaysia as soon as the retreat had finished, so I could stick to my plan of going back to Chiang Mai for one week before returning home.

Throughout all of this sulking and confusion, it was Apple who was busy making calls to the Burmese border to inquire about the possibility of doing a same-day border crossing there, and a few other calls to try and arrange alternatives. I won't keep going on about it, but her help that day, and ever since I met her, proved invaluable and I'm extremely grateful to her for being patient with me when I'm at my most petulant.

So,the end result is that I am here now, and I must actually leave the internet behind in five minutes to head back to the retreat centre for the opening talk which begins at four pm. I have had a brief look around the grounds of the temple, and I have liked what I saw. It feels extremely peaceful, which is in sharp contrast to the temple I stayed at in Chiang Mai which was under constant construction. My room resembles a prison cell, with a concrete bed, a wooden pillow and a solitary blanket but nothing can dampen my good feeling about the adventure upon which I am about to embark. At the brief interview earlier today, a nun asked me what I expected from my time at the retreat, to which I replied that I didn't expect anything at all other than that I leave knowing I have given the experience my complete attention and effort. She seemed pleased with that answer and reiterated the futiluty in coming to a retreat actually in search of something. It will only cause great frustration if you fail to find it. She then asked me a few practical questions regarding items I might need over the course of the ten days. She told me that most important in this rainy season is an umbrella and a flashlight, neither of which I had at the time but have now acquired. The flashlight, she explained, may come in handy as after 6pm, things get very dark on the grounds and what with it being rainy season, sometimes animals may be wandering around the path and it would be best to avoid them in pitch darkness. "Lizards and snakes...that kind of thing" is how she described it.

So, if in ten days you haven't heard from me, you may begin to assume that the batteries in my flashlight failed me and that I have fallen out of favour with a viper or a cobra, that kind of thing. Lets hope they last.

Here goes.....

I must apologise to anybody who has been wondering why I seem to have fallen off the face of the earth, but I will do my best to explain as much as I can in twelve days or so. For now, I need to dash to catch my train to Surat thani for the meditation retreat. It looked for a little while like I wasn't going to ba able to attend, but with the help of a friend, things worked out just fine.

So, until I'm back, take care.

My head hurts real bad.

I feel good. The past few days have ben among the most enjoyable of my unplanned stay here in Bangkok. Yesterday morning,when I arrived downstairs at the reception of my guesthouse,I was told that a package had arrived for me. I knew immediately what that expensive Fed Ex envelope would contain, and I couldn't help but feel a childish tingle in my stomach, as I carefully tore along the perforated edge to reveal my brand new ATM card, along with a short note from my sister, Julie, who had made all the neccessary arrangements to ensure I received it.
Somewhere in the region of $60 is what I've been told the parcel will cost, which is astronomical when you consider that it was only a solitary package, but I guess thats just what you have to pay to send items halfway across the world in under fourty-eight hours. She's charged it to her work account for now, with the idea being that she'll pay for it when the invoice arrives. If I was her, I'd be employing the uses of a selective memory.

With my spirits bolstered, and my future finances secured, I headed out to the Museum of Forensic medicine with a friend who's acquaintance I made in this very internet cafe a couple of weeks ago. You may remember I referred to a pleasant young lady who had been inquiring as to why I seem to spend so much time online? Her name is Apple (just a nickname,her real name is Surangrat) and she has been a good friend to me this past while, being the only company that I have had the pleasure of since arriving from Cambodia nearly twenty days ago. It is extremely helpful to stroll around the market-places,which can be rather extortionate for non-asians, with a local who can do some haggling on my behalf or tell me if I'm getting a good price. Mostly though, I have simply enjoyed having someone to talk to, and seeing as she speaks fluent english, I have been able to enjoy more fulfilling conversations with her than I have with most asian people.

So, off we set. From my adopted home here in Bangkok, just off the Khao San road, we needed to take a short trip on a water-taxi to get to the museum. The journey was pleasant enough, I have always been a fan of travelling by boat, even if it is only to be for ten minutes. The Siriraj medical museum is located on the grounds of a properly functioning hospital of the same name, in an old wing no longer needed for treatment of patients. The hospital was founded by the former King, Rama V, following a world-wide cholera outbreak in 1886 which overwhelmed the population and revealed a need for improved medical facilities. I was immediately struck by the size of the place; hospitals are usually big, for sure, but this one is enormous. I was not surprised to discover that the institute treats some one million out-patients every year. Another thing that struck me like a slap in the face was the sign at the entrance which read :
ADMISSION THAI...20 Baht
ADMISSION FOREIGNER...40 Baht


This is standard proceedure everywhere in south-east Asia, and despite my vague murmurings of discontent, I was not in the least surprised to encounter such a situation. I was eager to get inside and find out if it really was as gruesome as I had been led to believe. It didn't take me long to find out.
The museum is separated into six different wings, each of them specialising in a different branch of research. The three main rooms are all located in the same building, and these are the only ones that I had a chance to visit as we arrived just ninety minutes before the museum closed. The remaining few museums had exhibitions detailing the history of Thai medicine and the old favourite, the evolution of pre-historic man. Videos and models showing our rise from beast to brains, all very good in its own right, but not really what I was looking for anyway.

The biggest, and most interesting to my mind, was the Ellis Pathological Museum which houses a rather graphic mix of tumours, diseased organs and perfectly preserved babies and foetuses. This happened to be the first room I entered, and having been in there, no other aspect of the museum really held my interest. The very first thing I saw as I walked past the ticket booth was a dead infant in a jar, a victim of some rare disease I had never heard of and did not note the name of ( only the medical terms were used on the signs, which had very little english, and therefore proved to be mostly unintelligible to a man like myself ). I stood staring at it for a good couple of minutes, allowing the reality of the situation to fully sink in. On closer inspection, the infant looked rather like a rag-doll as his entire body was sewn back together following the autopsy, the line of stitches stretching from the top of his tiny head to his pelvis giving it an unreal, inhuman feel. As soon as the little boy died, he immediately ceased to be human and became instead a test-dummy to be sliced open and investigated using sharp implements. Thats a pretty radical transformation in such a short space of time, and it made me reflect upon just what it is to be a human being. The essence of the thing is certainly not to be found in the hardware for all of the organs remain intact for a short time after death, but when the unfathomable spark of consciousness has been extinguished, all that remains is, for all intents and purposes, a doll. Still, I couldn't help but feel extremely nauseous as I examined the carcass. It was only at this point, as I tried to observe the body from a side angle, that I realised there were many, many more just like it and that a strong stomach would be needed to get through the next hour or so without vomiting.

Also among the exhibits were numerous examples of conjoined twins, with the inside of their shared stomach exposed to reveal the freak abnormality that eventually proved fatal for 'both' parties. One particularly striking exhibit, which I came back to examine a few times, had an aborted set of conjoined twins, no bigger than the palm of my hand enclosed in a case. It actually looked rather comical, like two kids sitting facing each other huddled over some game that they were plugged into by means of wires attached to the backs of their heads. I wish I could show you just what I saw by way of digital pictures, but I don't have a camera and in any case, visitors are not allowed to take any. I did, however, manage to get some footage using my video camera while the security guard was attending to another matter.. Some of the people reading this entry will one day see the footage I'm going on about, and I'm sure that when they do, they will think they are looking at an art exhibition or an underground music video; it's hard to grasp at first that the babies on show were once real.

*****************************************************************************************************

I wanted to make this entry more detailed and more interesting, and perhaps I will, but I'll post what I have written for now, just to give you a taster of what I was up to in the days since I last posted an entry. This was originally written on August 25th, it is now the 30th.

I have been wanting to talk about an exciting endeavour undertaken by a group of musicians and music-loving technologists(not my phrasing) a few years back,which first came to my attention about a year ago,when the web link was sent to me by a friend.Pandora is the name of the site,and is the product of a conceptually gargantuan project which aims to break music down to its essential characteristics,stripping individual songs of their studio-recorded sheen to discover which musical attributes, or genes ,are present,with the view to unearthing other songs containing similar traits.The result of the Music Genome Project,I believe,is an enjoyable,educational and usually accurate method of discovering songs and bands that I am going to like.
You are probably thinking,as I did when I first heard of Pandora,that it merely distinguishes between different genres,with the end result being that you only learn of bands already known to you and therefore of little interest to you.This is not the case.Among the hundreds of genes recognised for any one particular song are features such as...." mild rhythmic syncopation"....."unintelligible vocal delivery"...or "meandering melodic phrasing".
Those examples are from the Mogwai song,'Dial:Revenge',taken from their 'Rock Action' album of 2001.The unintelligible vocals are delivered in all their Welsh glory by Gruff Rhys,lead singer of the Super Furry Animals,one of the most exciting bands of the past decade in my opinion. Ten years? Is it possible that I am a fan of a band who've been around for that long?... Terrifying. Either way,I digress.
The system is disarmingly simple to use.You begin by entering the name of a favourite song or artist- I always find that entering the artist's name produces far more satisfactory results,as every good artist is bound to have incorporated a rich tapestry of peculiarities in their music down through the years;a song,of course,is infinitely more limited - and in doing so,you create a radio station dedicated to playing songs with similar qualities to the one you selected.If it was a band name that you chose,Pandora will randomly select a song by that artist from their archives and the radio station will evolve from that.If you don't happen to like the song they suggest,you can bin it and it will never appear again.Complete control.
Click on the name of song,artist or album to receive all the relevant information,and fill in the blanks of your personal musical education.

I must admit that recently,I have been using the free service quite often as I am alone in Bangkok without an MP3 player,or even one of those antiquated "discmen" I still see some hardcore luddites wandering around plugged into,and I miss the freedom of listening to music whenever I fancy. Rob and his 'Zen' are greatly missed. There's only so much reading one man can do.
The main purpose of a machine like Pandora must be to enable music enthusiasts discover more agreeable music,so that they can then go and illegally download as much of it as they can before the fuzz have their say.Come to think of it,this is the only reason I can imagine it exists.I mean,of course there is the option of popping along to HMV or Tower,and procuring the new material there,but the disappointing thing about doing things this way is that the custodians of such establishments will invariably ask for money in exchange.

Today,I have been mostly listening to my "Cocteau Twins" radio station,based - for those of you who aren't familiar - on the music of the the strange and atmospheric scottish band of the same name,formed in the late seventies and whose music explores the depths of distortion and reaches the summit of sublime,thanks to the haunting,operatic vocals of the lead singer,Elizabeth Fraser.To anybody who would be considering taking a closer look at Pandora,may I suggest that you create a radio station based on this band; I'm certain that most people will not be disappointed with the results.I, for one, would never otherwise have come across acts like "The Arms Of Someone New" or "Drop The Fear" or indeed the versatile talents of "The Gathering",a dutch death metal band who have more strings to their bow than any other exponent of that ghastly genre I have yet to encounter.And that right there is the perfect reason to give Pandora a chance:It introduced me to a band that I would never have otherwise entertained,even for a second.Usually,if somebody tells me of a death metal band that I simply must listen to,I will be swift and merciless in showing them that their opinion is not relevant;violence is sometimes neccessary.But the soothing,exploratory vocals of the lead singer, Anneke van Giersbergen, make them a worthwhile risk.I was genuinely surprised.

Right now it's a band called "The Black Watch" on 'The Smiths' radio belting out the immortal lyrics...
"There's only one letter between bitter and better"


After that,it's an electronica outfit by the name of "Savath & Savalas" on another of my customised channels,their synthesised beats alternating from left ear to right faster than the head of an overly-vigilant tennis umpire.

I've said all that I came here to say.All I ask you to do is log onto Pandora.com and check it out for yourself.Let me know what you think.

Good luck.

I'll keep this one short and sweet.Motivation has been an issue these past few days,with reading being about the only task I can muster the will to perform.I think all the hanging around Bangkok is beginning to take its toll.The sooner the better I can get out of here and do something new.
My card has still not arrived,although it should be here before the end of this week.I received another Western Union transfer yesterday morning and immediately headed out to the Chatuchak weekend market,in search of some new clothes and a fresh perspective.I have been in need of new clothes for a long time,the old reliables are beginning to show signs of fatigue and there is only so much reparation work that can be done to a decade-old pair of trousers,the only pair that I thought to bring with me on this trip.Actually,I did have another pair at the beginning of my trip but they,along with an oppressively weighty fleece jumper,were jettisoned before heading north to Chiang Mai.Either way,what do you care?
The market is huge,terrifyingly so,with innumerable stalls selling anything that one could possibly desire,from live animals to Levi's,and from..(Insert examples from separate spectra here,preferably alliterated).

People are advised to arrive at the market before noon,for as the day progresses and the sun rises higher in the sky,the ability to bargain begins to wane,and the heat makes it impossible to enjoy what is otherwise a uniquely exhilarating experience.Due to the deliberately leisurely pace at which I ate my modest breakfast of bacon,eggs and toast,along with some hectic metropolitan traffic,I didn't arrive until after two in the afternoon.I was in no particular hurry,and so I casually dissected that day's edition of the "Bangkok Post",in between mouthfulls of dead pig and aborted chicken.It's usually quite a dependable publication,with regular and informative updates on the current international situation,as well as a rather comprehensive sports section which covers all main European and American events.Perfect for keeping up with any latest premiership news that may have escaped my attention.

It's the local news however,which deals exclusively these days - for page after page - with whether or not the Caretaker Prime Minister,Thaksin Shinawatra,should still be in power,that is beginning to exhaust my interest.Some people may remember hearing his name on English news stations a couple of years ago in connection with a proposed bid to buy Liverpool Football Club(Thank the Buddha that never materialised).I have no idea why he is constantly referred to as the 'caretaker' PM,especially seing as he has been in charge for the past five years or so,perhaps its just a title that doesn't translate very well into english.When I first arrived in Thailand at the beginning of March,the political instability excited me as I had never before been in a country where things were happening on such a large scale.When I left Bangkok that time to head north,there were reports in the media of two-million-strong crowds flooding the streets around the Royal Palace to protest at Thaksin's governing methods,and accuse his party- Thai Rak Thai(Thai's love Thai's)- of vote-buying and mass corruption.One of their more suspect policies was to 'donate' one million baht to each rural farming community prior to the previous election.You have to admire the honesty of it all though,can you imagine political parties in Ireland having the nerve to spearhead such a blatantly debauched campaign?

It worked anyhow,not surprisingly really.Even to this day,he still has the support of the majority of poor farmers and labourers throughout Thailand.What makes this country's protests note-worthy is the fact that it was the wealthier,more affluent population that took to the streets to demand increased transparency in its government's dealings.Most of the poor don't see any reason to care.They cite farming grants and a healthcare initiative which allows all Thai people to receive medical attention for thirty baht(sixty euro cent) as reasons to keep their head buried deep in the sand regarding the wider agenda of their billionaire leader.Perhaps they're correct to do so,don't bite the hand that throws you scraps.Don't ask questions.He is,after all,the only billionaire in the country,and you just don't win against that kinda muscle.That particular healthcare project,as attractive a proposition as it seems,is apparantly now the cause of much heated debate amongst doctors,incensed at the government's lack of urgency to cough-up the subsidies neccessary for the programme to prosper.Dissension in the ranks,it seems,is inevitable.

One interesting article I found in the Opinions & Analysis section,detailing the latest technique to be adopted by the US Transportation Security Administration(TSA) in their fight against the omnipresent threat of global terror,merried my mood somewhat.The basic idea is that a special team of 'behaviour detection officers' will be present at airports,scanning the faces of tired,frustrated,(possibly)delayed passengers as they board their flight,looking for indicators of stress or disorientation,such as jerky body movements and changes in vocal pitch.Perhaps the poor soul is simply terrified of flying,but all the same,in the interests of national security.
These officers,upon identifying a perceived threat,have the authority to begin a casual conversation with the suspect,asking them where they have just come from or what sights they visited.Making small talk,in other words.Now,it is only since I came to Asia,and became a member of that much-maligned group called tourists, that I realised just how much I detest being asked that exact type of trivial,impersonal question.These days,when asked the usual opener of "so,how long have you been travelling for?",I tend to look down at my feet and do my best to make it clear to the other person,without being rude, that I have no desire to play any part in the conversation.There is nothing wrong with the question I suppose,but it's usually delivered with such random,spurious insincerity that I cringe at the thought of dignifying it with anything other than a vague,non-committal repost.If one was to show interest in the original line of questioning,it would surely be followed by the consistently spiritless, "and where have you been?", and on in this vein,endlessly listing place-names,both parties existing only within the parameters set by similar conversations from their respective travelling pasts,neither really paying attention to the other,both lying in wait,eager for their chance to speak.If this is the best preventative measure that our western societies can think up to combat the very real threat of extremist behaviour on intercontinental airlines-to bore people into behaving anxiously-then I think I'll take the boat.
The obvious danger with any such initiative is the organisation surrounding its implementation.Are they simply looking for jumped-up Muslims and students wearing Bin Laden t-shirts? And will innocent,nervous passengers be forced to miss flights while paranoid policemen interrogate them for hours in the darker vestibules of the departures lounge? Yes,apparently.

In one of those rare and delightful,'You-couldn't-make-it-up',news stories,state police at Logan airport in Boston happened to pick out,based on behaviour observation,the national co-ordinator of the American Civil Liberties Union's Campaign Against Racial Profiling.The officer in question demanded to see the identification of a startled King Downing,who is black,insisting that he would be 'taken downtown' if he failed to comply.
He showed his I.D,and headed straight to his lawyer's office to have him file a lawsuit against the state.
Not that the officials in charge of the TSA will allow a simple misunderstanding like that to scupper their plans;in fact,they willfully accept that some innocent parties will be pulled aside and detained without just cause,making for even more,expensive lawsuits.But in their defence,a spokesman was quoted as saying,
"It is like throwing a big fishing net over the side of a boat:You catch what you catch,......but hopefully within that net is a terrorist"
With uncompromising,vigorous law enforcement officials such as the dynamic Carl Maccario there,"hopefully" rooting out the terrorists by means of unsophisticated guesswork,we can all look forward to flying in peace and tranquility.

"Go back to bed America,your government is in control again"
- Bill Hicks

Well,another couple of days have passed,and I'm that bit closer to receiving my new ATM card and getting on with my travels.I expect to be here for at least another week,but I am powerless to prevent an even longer stint here in this sprawling, monster metropolis-my next move is completely dependent on the efficiency and trustworthiness of both the Irish,and Thai postal services.Until it arrives,I will be relying on the generosity of my siblings back home to keep me housed,fed and watered.

There isn't much I can do either way,but I am holding out hope that it arrives before the end of the month, as this is when I will need to make my way down to the province of Surat Thani,some six hundred kilometres south of Bangkok,in order to register my name for the ten day meditation retreat at Wat Suan Mokkh which begins on the first of September.Before that again,I will have to leave Thailand for at least a few hours before re-entering,therefore renewing my thirty-day tourist visa -granted upon arrival to the country- which would expire on the fifth of September,leaving me with a rather hefty fine to face when I emerge from the retreat on the eleventh.I think the fee now stands at five hundred baht(ten euro) for every day spent illegally in the country.This is by far the highest such cost I have encountered throughout South-East Asia,but seeing as Thailand grants a free thirty-day visa to people from most countries,I think it a fair deal that they punish those who over-stay their welcome so extortionately.

I am looking forward to attending the retreat,which will be my second such venture,but I expect it will differ drastically from my initiation into the world of meditation at Wat Chom Tong in northern Thailand,some four months ago.I spent close to a month there learning the art of Vipassana(Insight)meditation,under the guidance of a young,fiercely driven Canadian monk who refused to allow me practice Yoga,or indeed any other form of activity besides Vipassana, for as long as I was there.Apart from odd ocasions,when I would curse his slightly sadistic methods,I came to have a profound respect for Phra Noah,and I followed as exactly as I could the advice he would impart to me during my daily reporting sessions with him.
He saw Yoga,and massage in particular, as merely temporary,preventative measures for dealing with pain,superfluous distractions that could only hope to delay the awful truth that the pain is just as real as elation or love or chocolate or sex,or any other transient comfort which we like to indulge in to help us feel immortal.What he wished to show me was that the pain,if it is experienced with no less than focused,unflinching attention,can in fact be overcome and objectively observed in much the same way as a stray thought or a loud noise from outside.A mere annoyance.
At first,I found this unfair and unreasonable as I had been enjoying a rather rewarding,week-long Yoga routine,which helped me to focus and prepare for the long,sometimes tedious,days of pure meditation.Quite frankly,there were days when I would have preferred to be a trouserless choir boy in rural Ireland than to face the daunting eighteen hour schedule of walking and sitting,constantly noting every emotion that arose until they lost all meaning.
But I understood the reasoning behind his methods,if not the methods themselves,and I continued along Yoga-less until the end of the experience.

This next retreat,however,has daily Yoga lessons as well as Dhamma talks every morning and evening from the primary teacher,Ajarn Poh.This is another thing that was so noticably lacking from the retreat at Chom Tong;the lack of general guidance or philosophical/spiritual readings,which would have brought much needed relief to the arid landscape of an ordinary day,peppering it with nuggets of wisdom,over which to ruminate and cogitate.
There is also a hot springs on the grounds of the temple which, as far as I know, is where the Yoga will be taking place,weather permitting of course.
It has a solid reputation also,having been set up in 1932 by the now deceased Buddhadasa Bhikkhu(Buddhadasa meaning 'servant of the Buddha', Bhikkhu meaning 'Buddhist monk'),who became disillusioned with the modern methods of learning and practising the Buddhist ideology,believing that ritual and politics had come to play far too prominent a role in what he described as "pristine buddhism",the original teachings of the lord Buddha.
While the daily practices of the retreat at Chom Tong were hardly oppressively encumbered by inane ritual,there did remain a slight agitation on my part at the deluded convictions,held by many Thai people,that the dangers of living a less than wholesome life can be miraculously balanced out by offering gifts and cash donations to your nearest temple,and in particular the monks that reside there-otherwise known as 'making merit'.The tradition goes so far as to assume that the souls of dead ancestors can be redeemed and spared an eternity in hell,if only their descendant's become monks for a brief period of time,some do it for as little as a day.This all strikes me as being outlandishly irrelevant,and I am of the opinion that monks have a duty to inform them that such actions are not a guarantee of anything other than perpetuating a futile tradition.Of course I understand and accept that to the people in question,these practices essentially hold a far larger meaning than just a futile tradition.And I also acknowledge the fact that monasteries,and their monks,could not survive without the generous donations of food and money handed over by believers every day,seeing as they are disallowed from owning any material possessions.What I could never grasp during my time in the temple was the fact that it's generally accepted that to do these things virtually guarantees the 'spiritual safety',as it were,of those who donate.Exactly like the old Catholic tradition of granting indulgences.

It has always been a source of amusement to me that Catholic believers,and Christians in general,can feel free to do whatever takes their fancy as long as they confess their sins at the end of the week to a sexually repressed man in a wooden box,as if the very act of divulgence neutralises the initial misdemeanour.It all ties in with a belief I've been indulging lately,that Christians essentially don't believe a shred of the teachings hurled at them from the pulpit every sunday,but they are more than willing to pretend they do if it means getting off the hook for now,and fantasising about a better time in the magical Afterlife.It reminds me of something that was said by a man called Alan Watts,a lecturer on different forms of religion and their role in ever changing societies,that if Christians genuinely accepted that their lord died,rose again,turned water to wine and all that malarky,and that he did all of this in order to save us from the repurcussions of our sins,then surely we would be screaming this from the rooftops,telling all and sundry that we are indeed priviliged to live on this tiny acre of God's estate.Apart from the odd raving lunatic that I see from time to time wandering the streets of Dublin City Centre,with a bell and a placard,this type of unabashed behaviour is decidedly uncommon in most Christians I know.

Religious rant over for now.I didn't even begin writing with the intention of talking about either Buddhism or Christianity,but once you begin writing,there's just no way to know what might come out.There isn't a whole lot to be done here in Bangkok,apart from reading and keeping this journal.It was certainly nice to see so many comments posted about my first entry,I appreciate the fact that anybody has taken the time to read my thoughts and it encourages me to keep on writing.So I hope you all meant what you said,because I'm going to be doing a bit more of this!
I remember Rob telling me how liberating he found it to write about what was going on inside his head,and I can see what he means.For a man in my situation,alone in Bangkok for the forseeable future,keeping this journal is about the only chance I have to formulate and marshall my thoughts,as the thrill of regular conversation with a peer is not an option.

A word or two on what I've been getting up to these past two nights.On Sunday evening,I watched my beloved Liverpool defeat the mighty Chelsea in what was actually a pretty exciting game.It was only the Community Shield,but I'm looking forward with positive anticipation to the new Premiership season,believing as I always do that this might be our year.I have,however,been believing the same thing for almost seventeen years now,so I'll go no further with my predictions.Towards the end of the game,I was joined by a likeable Austrian guy called Mickael who was flying home the following morning.We spoke about our respective musical tastes,our shared hatred for the universal language of R&B to be found in every pub and club on the planet these days,and our fondness for the occasional inhalation of a THC-saturated seedling.He even insisted on buying me a beer once I'd told him the story of my missing bankcard.This wasn't my objective in telling him,I can assure you,but I think he felt sorry that I have to spend so much time in Bangkok and also he had a few hundred Baht which were burning a hole in his pockets,so I kindly accepted his offer and returned the favour later on in the evening at a tiny Reggae bar just off the Khao San Road.
Incidentally,the reason we were at the Reggae bar was to make inquiries into the acquisiton of the aforementioned seedling,and after a small beer each and a game of pool on a tiny,novelty table,we set off to the safety of my fifth-storey lodgings to talk about skiing and get cooked.Neither of us were ready for the emphatic kick that the tiny bag had in store for us,and after a couple of minutes,I was beginning to wonder if Mickael was feeling as unbelievably light-headed as I was.I didn't have to wonder for too long,as he would intermittently tilt his head back and look at the ceiling while exclaiming in an Arnie-style accent "OH,Yah..Thats good.....thats really great shit".And it was,It blew the head right off my shoulders.Best to go easy on it I reckon,or else I'll be in a coma for the next two weeks.

Not much else happening socially,I have no reason to go out very often so I spend most of my time these days reading,eating and staring at this screen,all of which I have been enjoying immensely.With no real option to move anywhere else for the time being,I am forced to either enjoy my own company or be miserable and lonely.I am happy to say that I have been extremely relaxed these past few days,and I have not given in to the temptation to feel sorry for myself and curse my trivial misfortune.There are more important things happening,one of which is the birth of my new Niece/Nephew which I hope will have happened by the time my sister Suzanne reads this entry.If not,we'll all just have to wait a little longer.

But for now,from me,I bid you all adieu.Time,I think,for bed and dreams.I'll let you know if they're any good.

Until next time.

This is becoming a little farcical.I can no longer remember how many times I have tried to post this journal entry,but it has been more than one,and every time fate has intervened,be it in the guise of technical difficulties or early closing internet cafes,to set me back to square one.Still,thats not a bad place to start,so I will now do my best to chronicle the turbulent events of the past twenty four hours and with a little luck,it may just work this time.Truth be told,there have also been a couple of occasions where I've started to write,only to be submerged in a sea of self-doubt and insecurity as to the quality of my writing,and so I disgustedly delete the whole thing.Seeing as I currently hold no aspiration to become a writer,this probably sounds slightly odd to some.After all,I am only detailing what has actually happened to me.Sounds simple.Here goes.

I'm back in Bangkok,a situation which inspires neither delight nor desolation in my spirits.Its a kind of in-between place,a stop-off on your way to somewhere more exciting or culturally rewarding,whatever the case may be.I certainly had hoped to be out of here by now,on my way to meet up with Rob who, as some of you will know,is having an exceedingly strange time himself in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur(Read his latest journal entry,I urge you!)We have only seen each other fleetingly recently,and Malaysia was to offer me a final chance to hook up with my travel companion before I set off home for the grey,emptiness that is the Irish winter-time.Everything is a little doubtful now,however.

I slept deep into the dull,drizzly afternoon yesterday,which those of you who know me will be surprised to hear, is becoming the exception to the rule these days.My sleeping patterns became horridly disjointed while I was in Cambodia,with the result being that it is no longer strange for me to rise early despite having had little sleep,sometimes as early as dawn.The reason I slept so late yesterday was undoubtedly due to the ridiculously late previous night which saw me roll into the guesthouse at about seven am,several cocktails worse for wear(long island ice tea's,no less),and a sanctimonious lecture regarding the merits of Buddhism as opposed to Catholicism with a disgracefully drunk young fellow from the Old Bawn neighbourhood of Tallaght under my belt.

My dreams were strangely intriguing,and they washed about me with feverish rapidity,compelling me to see them through to their illogical conclusions.I was encouraged to rise however, when their content became too peculiar for even I to fathom.I love to dream,its one of my favourite pastimes but I must draw the line at Harold Bishop from 'Neighbours' choking to death in his kitchen,as a result of his being allergic to a tree which I for some reason had planted there,whilst singing 'Man in the Mirror' by Michael Jackson to his friend/enemy,Lou Carpenter.Time for the real world,to be sure.If I had known just what the real world had in store for me though,I may just have followed that nonsensical Australian soap-opera fantasy even further.
The evening flowed along rather unassumingly,the highlight of the entire thing being the purchase of two new cd's(Quality Control by Jurassic 5,and Thom Yorke's solo project who's name eludes me) and the reading of another couple of chapters of my latest novel,'The Line Of Beauty' by Alan Hollinghurst.Its an hilariously incisive exploration into the murky decadence of the upper classes in Thatcher's Britain,touching on serious cocaine abuse,homosexual sex,and the refusal to deal with the fallout-namely AIDS-which several of the characters fall victim to."An extraordinary bug....incredibly rare thing.....frightfully bad luck" is how one main character describes it upon hearing that a family member has just died from it.

Having paid for my lunch/dinner,I noticed that the funds were wearing more than a little thin,with only 400 baht(8 euro) left on me,so I decided to head around to withdraw enough to get me through the next few days and to Malaysia.When I opened my wallet and reached for the the familiar pocket on the left hand side, which has been the home to my A.I.B card for as long as I've owned it,there was only an empty space.It seemed to symbolise a much greater void which I was going to have to live through and cope with somehow.My umbillical cord to civilisation,my one and only means of survival was quite simply...gone.I looked up to find that life on the hectic Khao San Road had continued unabated,and that everybody seemed blissfully unaware of the crisis which only I could feel well up and engulf me like the subconscious meanderings that had held me captive earlier in the day.It was all I could do not to run screaming through the throngs and demand that something be done about this grave injustice.I called into a police station just to ask if anybody might have handed it in,but I don't think he quite understood me,and instead just began filling out a form(all in Thai) before asking me to sign it and ushering me away from his desk.God only knows what I'm supposed to do with it.

I returned to my room and searched around there for a while but I knew deep down that I would not be successful.The new reality which I was being forced to live in was slowly dawning on me; I'm in one of the biggest,and most unfriendly places on the planet with no money,no means of obtaining any money,and no friends to ask for help.I was glad of the teachings I learned at the meditation retreat,the controlling of the breath in times of seemingly insurmountable dread,has a uniquely pacifying effect.
But breathing is one thing,being kicked out of my guesthouse and starving on the streets is quite another.In reality,neither of these things were likely to happen,but at the time I was convinced that worse case scenarios were all i was going to encounter for the forseeable future.

I set about trying to organise a money transfer of some description,but as this was all happening at just past five pm Irish time,and Western Union transfers take place at post offices which close at five thirty Irish time,this didn't look like it was going to happen either.But thats where the family come into it.I had called my sister Julie first because I was sure I'd be able to reach her at work fairly quickly.I hadn't allowed for how busy my sister is though,and I was advised by the kind-sounding lady who answered the phone in her offices to call back in ten minutes as she was taking an important call...Inhale,Exhale.Inhale,Exhale.
When I did manage to finally reach her,she took control of the situation in a rather sterling way,organising things at lightning quick speed,like a bullet from a gun.Ready for anything is my sis.She in turn contacted my oldest sister,Suzanne who,at the time was expecting a baby at any minute.This didn't stop her from rushing down to make the neccessary arrangements however,with minutes to spare.Can you imagine if all that excitement had been the catalyst for her water's to break?That would have been a whole new adventure,and I wonder if I'd ever have been forgiven.

I hope they know how grateful I am to them for acting so speedily,and ensuring that I didn't have to go without for more than a few,panic-stricken hours.It all sounds very anti-climactic when you realise that I suffered no real hardship as a result of my stupidity in losing my card,but you must remember that if the transfer hadn't been made until the weekend was over,I would almost certainly have had to beg for money from an unsuspecting backpacker to get me through-a proposition which didn't then,and still doesn't seem very appealing considering the general distrust most people have for each other in cities such as the mighty Bangkok.

So a catastrophe was averted,and all I had to endure were a few torturous hours of doubt.It did make me reflect on my good fortune to live in an age where money can be 'transferred' to anywhere in the world within hours.It obviously helps when you have a family who can afford the time and the money to help you out of a position of real desperation too,but I'm still blown away by the wonders of technology.I don't understand it,but I am(in certain situations at least)a complete slave to its workings.
After all of that jostling about last night trying to make arrangements,and finally being rewarded,I came to this very internet cafe ant typed furiously about the events of the previous few hours.As I went to post it,the screen went inexplicably blank and it was all sucked into the nether regions of cyber-space.My walk home was very lonely indeed,I can tell you.There was a pleasant young Thai girl here last night who commented on how long I'd been online,and would you believe,she is sitting right beside me at the moment,and again has inquired as to why I always seem to be here.She must think I'm a journalist of some description.Or just a really lonely nerd.I'm not sure what I am any more.
I have spent far too long in front of screens these past two days,and I think I may be deserving of a cool refreshing nightcap before getting a relatively early night.Now,If only I could find my wallet.