No More Long Unwinding Roads

Firstly, apologies for not wishing you all a happy and peaceful New Year in my last post. I know that for me anyway, this year is going to be a very different one in almost every way and I hope that for all of you (including those of you who appear in my hit stats from Chile, The Canary Islands, Philippines, and other far flung places, whoever you are) it brings you whatever you want (within reason, of course).

The main reason for forgetting to include New Year greetings yesterday (especially regrettable as for most of you it was still 2008 while I was posting in 2009) is connected to the difficulties of uploading posts while on the move. Although I have been carrying my little Advent laptop around with me since I started this trip, I have been surprised (especially in Australia) by how hard it can be to find wireless access in some places. In Katoomba, for example, the hotel in which we stayed did not have a wireless network available for guest use (even for a fee). There was one café in the town which had free wireless access but they weren’t open on New Year’s Day and, even though I could pick up their network in the street when the restaurant was closed, I didn’t have the access code which is only divulged to paying customers. However, I am getting more used to hunting down unsecured wireless networks and spotted the public library just up the road (also closed but their network was available outside and no access code required). However, what I didn’t spot was that the only parking space outside the library was reserved for disabled drivers. At least, I didn’t spot it until it was pointed out to me by a member of Katoomba’s constabulary who also told me about the AUS$400 fine for violation. As a result, I had to pack up and move rather quickly and hence the lack of New Year greetings.

What I normally do is write these posts in advance whenever it occurs to me and then copy and paste when I can get online so that probably accounts for the disjointed nature of some of these ramblings - sometimes they are written a day or two before I can post them.

While I’m at the apologies, I’ll throw in one about photographs. I’m getting more and more frustrated about the way in which photographs appear in these pages - despite a deceptively simple tool which lets me upload photos and choose their size (small,medium or large) and their alignment (left, centre, right or none, whatever that means), the position in which they actually end up appearing seems to be more or less random and my ability to do anything about it almost non-existent. So if any of you can shed any light on this or give me some pointers, please let me know. The problem is most noticeable in posts with multiple pictures so please forgive the rather scattered and untidy layout you will see from time to time.

Anyway, I am writing this just after 1 a.m. sitting in Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport after an eight and a half hour flight from Sydney. I’m pleased to report that the airport is open for business again after the protests last month which closed it for some time and there is no evidence of any trouble, apart from a noticeably heavy security presence. My onward flight to Phuket is at 0750 hrs and so I need to stay awake until then. The airport is still quite busy as flights depart more or less continuously with just a brief lull between 0330 and 0600 and most of the restaurants look like they stay open 24/7 so there is plenty of activity. It also looks like some of the airport staff sleep on the floor in the airport rather than going home as three guys in airport security uniforms have just unrolled their sleeping bags on the floor opposite me. However, as per above, there doesn’t seem to be any public internet access here so I’m not sure when this will get posted, maybe in Phuket later in the day.

We are planning to pick up our Sunsail yacht on Saturday 3rd December so I expect to be out of contact for a week or so while we sail our way around the charter area. I am also back to having no mobile phone as my Vodafone pay as you go scheme won’t work here so no phone until Ireland. Having just completed a week’s charter in Australia, it will be interesting to see how the Thai operation compares with the Australian experience.