...nice...

After the previous night's explosion of manly mock-combat and powerful rum we awoke to none-too-pleasant hangovers which we managed to kick with hearty lunches. A brief stroll took us back to the beach where Matt and I hired a Kayak (or a Tri-ak as they are ingeniously named since there is room for THREE people in them...witty people these Thai chaps!) Aiming ourselves roughly for Barbados we headed out into the raging seas, singing nautical rhyme and generally pirating around...or as much pirating as one can achieve in a plastic canoe-thing. Will stayed on shore guarding our bags and throwing up - the hangover plus some very dodgey Thai buffet food from the night before had left his stomach in more of a wreck than our Tri-ak after 45 mintues of pissing around by the rocks. Aye, Matt and I managed to win some kind of award for "Most Retarded Tri-ak-ists Of All Time" by cap-sising (?) at least a dozen times after I leapt out of the boat to claim "the map" which turned out to be an old sack... 'twasn't worth it. It honestly was the cloest I've ever felt to drowning...and it would have been purely because I was laughing too hard to breath or swim. I have to say it wouldn't have been my ideal death.

Needless to say we drowned at sea, but once great Odin had granted us second life we returned to shore and purchased an American football and some ice-cream :D Twas ace, though I was shocked to read that my chocolate cornetto was 2.7% chocolate...what the hell was the other 97.3%?! Who knows. Cabbage? Probably not. Mead? Definately not, this is not Valhalla yet my boy.

Will was feeling slightly better after throwing up most of his insides (except his appendix - ironically he managed to keep that) so we ran into the sea and played a game that we named "toss the ball in the general direction of the other person and try to snatch it out of the air before it hits the water". Twas fairly reminiscent of a more popular game "catch", only with 200% less motor co-orindation and absolutely no "cool" factor due to...well...due to us. But it was fun. The girl from Marlow that we met the night (did I tell you about her? If not - we met a girl from Marlow, which is like tne-minutes drive from us) before turned up and joined in with her friend, but she put us to shame so quickly that we soon bullied her out of the game.

Then twas back to shore again where we relaxed on the beach, inventing tails about the "3 Emperor Dogs" to add to our version of the apocalypse. It is coming along well, I will write it out in full some time.

Then twas off into town for yet another suit fitting and then we headed towards Hippies Bar where my friend Steph had told me that they hold open mic nights. Luckily for us it had just started and we were treated to some rather odd interpretations of some fairly well know songs - twas...good? However, twas not really an open mic night since the guy who was organising it played a 2 hour long set... He did, however, let me play 2 songs in the middle of it, turning Will down all-together when he asked to play. We were not impressed. My renditions of Peaches and Cream by John Butler and Carvel by John Frusciante went...slightly below averagely and were met by the appropriate lack of noise, but I had fun and I was given yet another free bucket of drink.

...then the waitress came over and spoke to us, asking whether we wanted to take part in a "contest"...

...my response went something like this...

"so...we neck 2 beers...a bucket of rum and oragne...then and six shots...for free? And if we do it faster than anybody else...we win a free bottle of tequila? For free? We pay nothing...nothing at all? ...nice..."

And that was that. The teams were gathered - there were about 6 teams of 2; Will and Matt made one, me and some Irish fool made up another, and the gauntlet was thrown down. The idea was to each neck a beer as fast as possible, run to the next stool, drink the rum n' orange bucket as fast as possible, run to the table and knock back 3 shots each...then hurl if so required.

The chaos...was absolute. It was sado-masachism in its most drunken form as each team was cheered on by a hundred rapid party-goes as they drank and hurled and drank and hurled again, all the way to the end. I am proud to say that, of all 12 drinkers...Matt and I were the only ones who did not vomit. But this is because we are seasoned feasters. But the real prize goes to Will; for doing the whole thing despite being horribly ill!

No, I lie. The REAL prize went to a team from England who beat me and Irish Fool by 1-second. So we missed out of the bottle of Tequilla, but second-place won me ANOTHER bucket of booze! Will n Matt came third, winning a big bottle of beer each...bringing our total free drink that evening to 3.5 buckets, 4 beers and 9 shots...nice...

The rest of the night dissolved into drunken dancing and partying and I ended up playing guitar and singing for a group of 3 Thai guys who insisted on recording everything I played on their phones, informing me that my drunken renditions of Times Like These and Ed's Potatoes Song would be number one in Thailand because Thai music hurts people's ears...it was a nice compliment but for some reason I didn't believe them, especially when they started playing the recordings back to me...oi oi oi...the fatalities at the Somme are nothing compared to the amount of deaths that I died over those minutes...

Eventually I managed to leave, but not before they had demanded that I play Zombie by the Cranberries - a song that I cannot stand listening to (let alone playing) at the moment without getting somewhat down in the mouth; it has connections to my recent ex-girlfriend. I thrashed through it anyway, we had a nice old sing song and I stumbled home to bed.

Today we are hopefully going rock climbing, snorkelling and cliff jumping...but we'll see what happens. Sorry for the lack of photos - it has all been...too drunken...