It will soon be upon me. Tuesday the 16th will be the day I fly over to South East Asia. And so today marks the beginning of the online bit of it all, as I might as well get all the crap I have to do out the way now and start talking about my imminent departure a bit more.

Many of the places I will be visiting will not have good Internet access. In fact many will have none at all. In fact I'll be mightily disappointed if I visit some authenticly local region and I find it full of foreign visitors on computers writing their weblogs. But occassionally I will come to an internet cafe and I hope to pen some words to anyone who wishes to read my probably unimportant observations. The problem I foresee is that some may find what I say offensive or insulting. I hope not, firstly because I hope I find nothing to complain about. Secondly 'cos I don't want to turn into this twat. Actually I dithered over whether he deserved my link seeing as it might give him the satisfaction of extra vistors, so I ask you to leave a nasty message on his guestbook should you become one.

My plans are thus: travel out to Bangkok where I meet my mates Rob and Ben. Rob will be with me for two months, Ben for two weeks (poor). Piss around Thailand for a bit, go to an island beach; see Phucket (pronounced "Poo-get" I'll have you know); travel up to Chang Mai perhaps if we're up to it. Then in mid April it's over to Cambodia to meet my mate known in the comments bit as Phantom Mencap. Then fuck about the place till my money's run out making sure I don't miss any of the football enroute.

Oh yes the European Championships. Don't get me wrong, I'm not travelling just to go on a year-long bender, but I will be taking in this festival of football. And Lake Toba is a place that has been recommended to me... It's a lake nestling in the crater of an extinct volcano in Sumatra and a good place to watch footy tournaments. Don't know why, looks like a good place full stop.




There are three or four other friends I hope to meet up with and tens more I hope to create whilst there. Which is admittedly not very exciting for you. But hey, maybe you'll be lucky and I'll have an absolute nightmare of an experience. In which case all those annoying early entries braying about how great it all is will become much more enjoyable as material to look back upon when you are basking in my misery.

Finally, my mate Tom has set up his own weblog: visit the dataphage blog regularly to see if he updates or joins the many blogs that end up like the majority of gym subscriptions that start in January... To this day I still don't know how I've not joined that mass - on many occasions it's been truly close.