Head like a beehive

Does anyone else get it? Too many ideas at once? I feel like I'm getting stuck waist deep in a bog of thought. So many stories, scripts, artwork to be finished, songs and lyrics to be written. I find it so hard to concentrate on one thing at a time, to sit down and really use all my brain for one idea. And, to be honest I don't know if I could, sometimes I feel like maybe I do function best flitting between things keeping my mind guessing with fresh ideas. This does however mean that I don't have to time to really think deeply over plot or content when it comes to stories and lyrics, which can be a problem. Though, when it comes to stories and scripts I find my mind does stew nicely over things while walking and while listening to music, helping scenes and events evolve naturally in my head. I hope that eventually my ideas will come to fruitation and that I will be able to tell my stories in different manners or mediums.

Anyone else get like this? Message me about it! Who knows maybe we could work some ideas!

Hazz

Musical Progress

So after the other day's post Rick, Adam and Myself set off again to the musical grindstone. The progress we actually made was to piece together our music for an advertisement for that elusive member that we've been seeking, someone to join us and slave away over a hot bass all day until the perfect musical cake is baked. I'm hungry. I want cake. So, not only did we reorder some of our tracks into a montage kind of order we also set up a bunch of cameras to record us playing, which in turn will be clipped together with the tracks over the top to literally make an advertisement!
On another note we decided to record ourselves on video on the hottest day of the year. In a small room. With lots of amplifiers. So you can imagine how delightfully cool it was. Yeah, sweating all about the place. Adam was so happy to be on film behind the kit.

Over the next week or so we'll not only be putting the video together but also reworking our logo into HD for a nice little animation towards the end of the video, all in all we're particularly excited to get this stuff released! You can follow us on Twitter by clicking here or you can like and follow us on Facebook by clicking here to see the update once its uploaded!

Hazz

WHERE IS ALL THE BASS?!

So for any other musician readers you will probably find the same problem as me and my band Arcanist, the lack of Bassists. Or Drummers for that matter, however me being lucky I managed to find two brothers, Richard and Adam Corrie who are both ridiculously talented at their instruments. And not to mention their Dad who has the "go for it" attitude meaning he doesn't mind us playing loud to keep up with the volume of Adam's acoustic drum kit. We've been searching unsuccessfully now for a Bassist for about 6/7 months! And if you've been in that situation you may know that sometimes the engines of writing can come to a halt. I think location is a huge factor when it comes to music, especially living in smaller towns or rural areas like we do, although saying that I've made a point of posting ads as much as I can around Manchester and even online band sites to try and find someone to complete our lineup. During the writing and recording section of music a full band is not always essential, that being said it's still a huge help to have another creative input, however once you get to the performance stage of things its starts to get a little harder, involving playing to various clicks, tracks and click tracks! With all that being said we are still hoping that one day soon the right Bass player will come along, if you or anyone you know is from the area around Manchester in the UK and is particularly skilled at playing please get intouch with us! Even if you'd only like to be a session bassist or even just performance it'd still be great to hear from you. If you're feeling generous you'd could click here and follow us ok Twitter to find out when we find what we're looking for or even like us on Facebook by clicking here. We look forward to sharing our unusual blend of music with you guys!
Hazz

Giant Spiders and Accidently Swimming With Sharks

I stood in the dark in my hut, with no lights but my torch I cleaned my teeth and climbed into bed. The heat wasn't too bad thanks to the storm, the rain really took the temperature down. But there was a sound that caught my attention. A faint high buzzing, which stopped as I felt something on my leg, then more buzzing. It then occurred to me that now the air conditioning's fans had stopped turning thanks to the power outage, allowing any kind of bug to make its merry little way into my hut. These bugs took the form of many mosquitoes. I put on some bug spray but still got a relatively sleepless night, and when morning came lets just say I was little itchy. From my head all the down to between my toes..

Regardless of bugs Shiralea really was a great place, one of my fondest memories being in the cold pool up to my neck while eating a steak and drink a huge Mai Tai at lunchtime. Don't judge me, all the travelling had messed up my time, it was 5pm somewhere. Lounging around in the pool was a great way to spend a day, I floated on over to some of my friends sat on loungers, but as I stopped myself against the edge of the pool something caught my eye behind them in the trees. At first the distance and size of the thing didn't make sense in my head, I climb out and walked between the seats. My eyes finally made sense of what was hung there in the trees, suspended in a web. A spider of epic proportions. Its smooth black legs contrasting against its bright yellow swirled body, it looked so strange as it moved around. Apparently they eat birds...

The Beast 

I know what you're thinking, not something you want to get close to right? Just for size relevance it must of been about six or seven inches leg to leg. The stuff of nightmares. Don't get me wrong I'm no arachnophobe but once they get over an inch long they're not something I want to share a room with. And, that my friends brings me to a lovely little "life event". I came back from the pool one night to shower before bed and as I walked into my bathroom, which I'll clarify as a "wet room" as it seemed all bathrooms in Thailand just had a shower on one wall with a grate for the water to escape through, usually the opposite corner. So, as I stepped in the first thing I noticed was that the grate had moved, dipped in like something heavy had pushed it down and then I noticed it, a rather large spider just relaxing on my wall. It's legs spread out to make it look just that little bit bigger. It literally stopped me in my tracks, frozen in the doorway. I stood staring for a moment waiting for it to scuttle towards me to which I'd freak out and probably run around the hut. But, it didn't move. I did not feel up to dealing with it, so I just shut the door and placed a towel along the bottom of the door, I did not want to share a bed with it. That night was mostly spent grasping various parts of my leg as if every itch was it wrapping itself around my leg like the Facehugger from the Alien films.

My New Room Mate

The next morning came and upon checking the bathroom, that lovely eight legged fellow was still lingering. Closer to the drain this time though so I thought he might be leaving. The main thing I was worried about obviously was getting bitten by a spider in a tropical place, because my knowledge doesn't span as much into poisonous spiders on this side of the world, I mean I know a few to be wary of but I wasn't sure of this one. So do I kill it? I don't really like killing things I more for catching things and letting them go, live and let live and all that. But, I don't want to try and catch it if it's going to bite me and while I'm unconscious lay eggs in my eyeballs. It's a moral dilemma. In the end I asked Joy at the bar if they do have any particularly toxic spiders which could do someone serious hard and it turns out they don't.
"Only hunting spiders here"
Which made me feel a whole lot better meaning they just had huge fangs to kill with. So armed with that knowledge I headed back to my hut. How do I get it out? Having a lack of boxes or cups and magazines I decided to, as stupid as it sounds to splash water from the sink at it. Manly I know. The spider however after a while of scuttling towards the grate thought,
"Well this is just rude, getting splashed every five seconds when I've just settled" and made it's way out through the whole where the grate had lay. I managed to use a pen to also pull the grate back into place! But it did find its way back once or twice.

Seeing this Island definitely made me want to see more, the bugs definitely were not enough to put me off. Koh Phangan was a great place and was becoming westernised which is not necessarily a good or bad thing. But it is changing. Also if you ever seen the film The Beach with Leonardo Dicaprio it is actually based on an island near Koh Phangan on the eastern gulf of Thailand. You're wrong I hear you shout, it was on Koh Phi Phi on the western side of the country! But, trust me, for sure it was filmed there on the gorgeous beach on Koh Phi Phi, but apparently the real island is on the eastern side. Why did I not go there you may ask yourself, well during my time in Chiang Mai before I chose which island to fly to, there was actually another earthquake which had the same epicentre as the 2004 earthquake which decimated the islands lying on the western coast of Thailand. With the 2004 quake being one of the most devastating events to happen, it actually caused the entire earth to shake 1cm, I know that doesn't sound much but, just let that settle in. The ENTIRE PLANET moved due to a one earthquake. The quake this time was caused by the tectonic plates sliding against one another rather than pushing upwards, luckily this didn't cause another wave, but for the peace of mind I chose the eastern side.

I was invited by Mark and Tamara to join them to move to the next island Koh Tao, looking at the sizes of the islands here Koh Tao ranked at very small. Just what I wanted, somewhere not to modern, somewhere to relax. We said our goodbyes and made our way to the port to buy our tickets, only a taxi ride away. The boat was quite nice actually, sandwiches and drinks served and plenty of other people to talk to.

Koh Tao instantly felt different to Koh Phangan, confirmed to us with the taxi being a pick up truck. We climbed in and gave the driver the address, he told us to hold on and set off. Straight away I could see why he told us to hold on, the roads here were non-existent. Simple dirt tracks not even close to flat filled with cracks and holes ranging up to two feet wide and five feet long snaked their way up into the hills and that, was the way we were headed. Driving down these hills made us genuinely worried, the cliffs along these roads seemed perilous, bouncing along these "roads" brought us so close to tipping over. Eventually we descended from the hills into a small jungle like area culminating to a stone courtyard.

Lederhosen?

We were shown to our rooms but straight away met by the pool, to which I jumped in. We needed to swim, and I've got to say that the bay which our hostel was located was gorgeous. White sand with rocks around the edge, the deep turquoise water with a huge twenty foot rock breaking through into the air two hundred yards out. We got ourselves snorkels, masks and flippers from the diving school next door and quite literally dived right in. We swam for a good two hours, all the way out to the end of the reef, around the towering rock to what looked like "The Drop Off" from Finding Nemo. Brightly coloured fish swam back and forth through the warm water, neon pink and green striped Parrot Fish crunched on rock with their beaks keeping us mesmerised with their bright colours. We made our way back to shore paddling gently in the descending sun, as we reached the shallows something swam around me one way, then another the other side. They were Sharks. Only baby ones around two and a half feet. But still Shark. I didn't mean to swim with them, but turns out I can add that to the things I've done!

The Sea Was Blue and The Drinks Strong

Being stuck in airports is something that nobody likes, but I've got to say that I didn't mind waiting in Koh Samui's. It was much more of a beach hut with some planes next to it and a few mini buses out front. I purchased from one of the desk a ticket for one of the mini buses and boats leaving from a miscellaneous port to Koh Phangnan. The taxi was very pleasant and so were the other passengers, a few being English travellers also. We eventually reached our port where we had to wait for about an hour and my breath was taken away. The sea, was beautiful. The white sand, bordered by the bluest water topped by the peer stretching out like an arm reaching for peace. A taste of a real paradise.

We took the hour as our free time to swim and simply float around in the warm water. The relief of laying down my heavy bag in the sand and letting the water soothe the aches away. We chatted with a man who moved here from England who lived on the beach front, he'd been here for about twenty years and apparently was now bored of the sun and beaches. I couldn't see how. The boat eventually arrived at the end of the peer and we made our way still dripping with sea water. I took my seat at the front of the large boat, my feet hanging overboard, the large waves reaching them and shining in the sun. I reached my port before long and found myself a taxi accompanied by two Norwegian girls who offered to share their fare with me as my hostel was on the other side of the island. Driving through these island towns was an unusual thing, they were more palm tree jungles, dotted with houses, dirt roads and the odd tarmac one too. After driving for quite some time I was eventually tipped to the front of the taxi as we drove down a very steep hill, down towards the beach I might add, and came to a halt by some cabins. Shiralea Backpackers Resort was where I had arrived, and as I climbed the wooden steps there lay on a rug with a beer was Brian, "Hey! You made it!"
"Told you I would".

I had paid a little extra for my room here, after Bangkok I wanted a room with aircon. However when I arrived at my little hut through the little jungle path I found I not only had aircon but also two double beds and my own little hammock on the decking outside over looking the pool.

First things first though, I needed food. And the burger I got was amazing, huge and cooked perfectly. I might add that so was the cocktail, not cooked but mixed to be strong but fresh tasting. Fresh because I watched Joy, the bartender, blend the whole fruits.

Not only was this place homely, set slightly in the jungle area with its own pool, still close to the beach, serving great food and drink, but it also had an eclectic mix of people from all over the world. Not only that but a group from an "Under thirties" cruise, spending time at this place before moving on. Among the people I met where a Dutch couple Mark and Tamara, Brian obviously, Leah and Rahul, who actually used to work in my home town! Julian from Germany, Carl from Sweden, Luke, Victoria and Scott who have only just returned after nearly a year away, and Lucia an Italian girl from Florence. This not being everyone obviously and I'm sorry to anyone who's names I cannot remember!

On one particular night, Joy's bar had switched on some UV lights, and then out came the UV reactive paints... We painted each other for a good hour drinking all the while. The artist in me quite literally shone. After the painting finally stopped, we went to spend some time at a party on the beach called "The Black Moon", similar to the "Full Moon" parties which you're probably familiar with, one problem that is when we got there they had decided to charge quite a lot of money for entry and none of us had brought enough. We decided then because of this, to make our own party outside of the gate using their music! With a whole load more people joining us, including many more Germans! I swear I met more German people on my travels than actually live in Germany. The night that followed, sat on that beach with plenty of Chang, Chang is a Thai beer that we could never guarantee the strength of, one night we could have five bottles each and feel fine, another night we could have one bottle each and be on our backsides in the sand, was great. More fun than you can imagine. Gentle breeze and the cooling sea, contrasting the ever warming bottles of beer we collected. However, that can be one of the worries in Thailand, recently a girl was told she was drinking Gin to find it was actually Methanol, she went blind and died. Be careful where you get your drinks from. I don't want to ruin the happiness or fun, but always buy from a real store.

The taxi ride back was eventful, as we would not all fit, some of us had to hold onto the roof while standing on back step of what was essentially a pick up truck with a cover. The hills proved dangerous but a lot of fun at high speeds, in my drunken state my hands slipped. I'm gone. This is going to hurt. As I fell briefly, hands gripped me and pulled me back into the taxi, thank you whoever the hands belonged to. For that, I could easily owe you my life.

When we arrived back home at Shiralea it had begun to rain, slowly washing the paint from us. As the night was late we retired to the pool hut, we sat and played into the night under the bombardment of water, the odd cicada and lightening. That night when I returned to my hut, the electricity had shorted out. But I did not mind, what a memorable night it was.

My Street 

My House

and My Hammock

The Endless Sea

Songkran, The Floating Market and The Night Train

It was pretty refreshing to be honest being covered head to toe in icey water, either from the water guns, cups or buckets. Being forty Celsius and around eighty percent humidity, as you can imagine it was pretty uncomfortable! Songkran for anybody who doesn't know is basically Thai New Year or The Water Festival some call it, mainly because as you read above drenching everybody with water is part of the cleansing ritual! To quite literally wash away the bad things of the previous year. The only problem was that if you wanted to take a look around anywhere, particularly in Bangkok where there are thousands of people, it's pretty difficult to stay dry! Also pretty hard to eat from the street kitchens when you keep having to run around the damn cart, spilling all that awesome food everywhere.

After running from the locals covered in a plethora of Thai curries we jumped onto a bus, lead by the lovely Sylvia (a Swiss singer) and Zeineb (whos name I struggled with so much I ended up just calling her Zee) who were staying in the same hostel as me. Our adventure today, was to the "Floating Market", a short trip by bus and by far one of the most unusual sights to behold.

We exited the boiling pan of a bus and straight into what was stalls set right up into the carpark. I found myself stuck with thoughts of how this market was definatley not floating in any way. Unless you counted the smell, it definatley has a hovering notion about the nose, which was caused by the odd fruit you are not aloud in certain places, because of the smell. I believe it's called a Durian, we were offered to try some but as the smell really got up in my head I refused, however Sylvia did say it's taste was rather pleasent! I followed Sylvia around the next corner to find quite a sight, the reason this was called The Floating Market was because the next section was floating, made from a ramshackle of miscellaneous boats and stalls around a central pool. I watched as a young boy threw what looked like a handful of Wotsits (curly cheese flavoured crisp) into the calm water. What is that?! The pool suddenly came to life. The water bubbled and rose, filled with life as hundreds of catfish begin writhing over each other fighting for the food. Some, even left above water for minutes unable to return to submersion due to the unexplainable amount of fish. And then, stillness. Only gentle ripples left on the pond as remnants of the sudden life. Then, mere seconds later, another passer by repeated the spectacle with the addition of another handful of cheesy snacks. You could also buy baby turtles to release into the river as a good luck charm for the year!

My attention was now drawn away, by the rising of a machete out of the corner of my eye. Which was brought down quickly, into the top of a Coconut. And, with terrifying accuracy of several intense hacks removed the "lid" of the poor Coconut, a straw was placed into the now Coconut bowl and it was passed to me. The milk of the Coconut was intensely smooth and sweet. Probably the freshest thing I've ever had the pleasure to drink. And with that, I was hit with a sudden sense of dare I say it, paradise. Sat by the water, the sun shining, boats passing and drinking from Coconut. Instantly surreal.

Then once again the water guns came out, the cold water onslaught eventually drove us back to the streets and we began to walk back. The houses down the streets were filled with life and a local shop with an open front had a barrel of water and ice, surrounded by children who were playing in the street with buckets and water guns. We were chased around by the children and then pulled into the shop by the adults and forced to drink pints of beer for free. I mean literally forced. Not the worst thing in the world! Sylvia, Zee and I all danced into the music and water sprayed all around us, enjoying the beer and kindess of the locals, but as it always does time had come around to head back. And, upon the family finding out we needed to leave, they sent their children into the road to stop a bus, to which they entered the bus armed with waterguns. It was a massacre, no one was left dry.

For the next few days Songkran continued and so we spent a good amount of time drenched, during one trip back to change my clothes I met Brian, sat drinking coffee in my hostel waiting to check out. We chatted for a while about travelling and how our trips were going, he was an American teaching English in Korea and this was his holiday period. He told me about an island, sounds like the movie The Beach right? Well unfortunatley there was no map, but I did have an island name and a hostel. Feeling particularly spontaneous I turned to him and said "I'll meet you there next week".
With that he left for his flight and I left for the train station. I regret that I missed Sylvia and Zee before I left, I really hope that we will meet up again in some other random hostel somewhere!

Tonight I was taking the night train. Chiang Mai. This line is way too long. I stood waiting and eventually purchased my overnight ticket, and I was going economy. This meant my seat and bed were not a secluded room but just a regular train seat. But for only £14 to travel from one end of the country to the other, pretty good if you ask me! After sitting and reading for a while I was joined by a Thai girl, whos name regrettably escapes me, who sat quietly across from me. We began chatting as the train pulled away and settled for a long journey.

As night fell one of the train stewards came to my seat and asked me to stand for a moment, he folded away the table and slid down the seats to form a double bed, it now occured to me that I may be sharing my bed with this random girl. Until he also folded down a second bed from the ceiling! Probably best to be honest I hardly knew her. I was shocked firstly that I fit in the bed, and secondly because my bed was level with the window, so as I lay with my aisle curtain drawn, I was met with the view of a sunset. Casting purple and orange clouds across the sky above the sea of trees and jungle below as the great red disc settled on the horizon. The steady rocking of the train was kind of relaxing and I thought this would be a good nights rest, which it was, but when I woke I found myself still in the jungle. The train had broken down.

My Tuktuk ride

A picture of children during Songkran, consider it had NOT been raining.

My room on the train.

Countdown Karaoke to Standing On The Sun

My next trip dawns ever closer, and I'm not even half way through this current blog. Which means you may see my little posts more regularly! Time in Tokyo was running out (not in a Godzilla kind of way) just that my time there was nearly up. What's the best way to celebrate your last night in Tokyo? That's right... Karaoke! But first food shopping, its a must. Even the food shops are odd here, although I think food companies would sell way more food if the packages here in England looked like this.

 

So after some more Sashimi to celecrate my last day we spend another day looking around the temple, bathing in the smoke from the well to cleanse our souls and waiting for night to fall.

We made our way to Shinjuku and crossed with the sea of people at the biggest crossing in the world which was weird, stood waiting with what could've been a thousand people. We found the Karaoke bar and if I'm honest it was different than what I was expecting. In my head I had picture a bar with a stage like what you would find here or any other country, but in Japan they do things a little different. We paid the fee and were shown up three flights of stairs and into a small room containing a TV, a phone, four microphones and a menu. I was still in awe from the weird art work on the way up the stairs.

See what I mean? Exactly. Face and Ass, such a classy piece. What came next was the most beautiful rendition of A Whole New World my ears have ever been punished with. Thank you once again for that Marcus, Sponge and Becky. Another unusual point was that you used the phone in your room to call the bar below to order and deliver your drinks!

My time was running out, my flight was at 00:30am and it was now pushing 11pm. I've left this too late! I had to say a quick goodbye to my friends, thank you once again for making my stay in Tokyo so much fun, and make my way back to the hostel to get my bags. I hailed a taxi outside and made my way to Narita Airport. The traffic was terrible, I had forgotten how busy this city was even this late. I was verging on missing my flight, it was getting down to the last half an hour now, and I was still stuck in traffic. I gave the taxi driver free rain to drive like a madman to get me there in time.

We arrived and I didn't have enough money for my fare... but, the driver let me off for making his shift exciting, apparently he didn't get to drive fast often! I ran through the airport straight to the desk, and made it to my gate as they were about to close. Thank God, made it aboard in time. I settled in for my trip back closer to home, closer in a sense anyway. I had nearly boarded the wrong flight due to a translation error on my part, but it goes both ways. A word of advice, make sure you're positive on what words say before you go ahead using it for directions or anything else...

 

We're landing.Time for a different climate. Don't get me wrong, Japan had its nice days but this next place was on another level. The surface of the sun to be precise... This place, was Bangkok.

 

As soon as the door of the plane opened I was hit by what felt like a literal wall of heat, I checked if my eyesbrows and beard were still there as I thought they'd been seared away. The first thing I saw there? A HUGE Manchester United logo. Am I home? Did I board the wrong plane? Those thoughts were quashed as I was suddenly, as if they popped into existence, in the presence of monks. Full orange robes and all, but talking on mobile phones. It was an unusual cross over of the new and old to be honest, like a pensioner sat playing an Xbox listing to Tiny Tempa or something.

I collected my things and made my way outside. Jesus Christ. It was even hotter outside, I found a taxi and climbed in. Onto leather seats which burnt and stuck you to them which was needed with this guys rally driving skills. Bangkok was an unusual city to see speeding by me, I saw again such a mix of old and new culture, my hostel was situated above a coffee shop which was perfect. I have never had such an amazing iced latte. After I checked in at 11am (I'd landed at 5am) I decided to take a little stroll and to see where I was. I was right next to a temple again!

 

Lovely as that was I was instantly almost mugged by a tiny hobo, more beardy and haired than myself! But I stood my ground. He was not having my money. I had had too little sleep to messed around. It was strange because as soon as I stood up for myself he went on his way, perhaps he expected for foreigners to hand out cash easily. This little triumph was soon dispersed as I was shot with a water gun, although to be quite honest it was extremely cooling! Then it dawned on me what I had read on the date I had landed, tomorrow was the begining of Songkran. The water festival.