Thailand, no words can explain

As soon as you land in Thailand, the differences are so in your face, it was quite hard to comprehend.  Even as they were landing the plane, looking out of my passenger window, seeing all the roadside stalls, dogs everywhere, 17 people per motorbike and all the run down buildings, it felt more like I was watching a TV documentary.  When I came to Australia, it took a while for me to realise that I had left the UK, everything had its similarities to back home, but with a slight twist.  Here, well, whole new world really.

So I start my Journey in Phuket airport, where it is just as hot as Australia, but the humidity and the smell.  Its not a smell of sweat and body odour, but excrement really, not pleasant.  And as soon as I go outside, this seems to be true for everywhere in Thailand, you are pounced on, "Taxi, you want Taxi".  You cant walk 10 paces without being asked.  It seemed as long as you gave a polite no with a smile, they leave you alone.  Nice enough people, but seeing as a bus is 10 times cheaper than a taxi, I think I'll stick to the bus.  My bus being that small blue one on the right.  Costs about $1.20 for a 2 hour bus trip.  My time in Phuket was pretty uneventful, I was only here for one night, and I spent most of that just walking around checking out the madness.  The night markets are pretty cool though.

Pattaya here I come, jump back on the little blue bus back to the airport, and board the equally colourful plane.  I thought Phuket was crazy, Pattaya is something else.  Everything is illuminated by neon lights, streets are bustling with bike taxis and ladyboys, everyone is drinking and having a good time, I just cant think of words to explain it.  Taxi takes me from the airport straight to the hotel where I meet dad.  Great to see him after so long.  Pretty quickly, its bags upstairs, shower then off for some food and drinks.  Also meet up with his long-time lady called Limb, or Lin, or Jim I cant remember.  Nice enough lady, and also speaks some English!

So the past 3 days have led a pretty similar pattern, wake up, dad and me go for a walk, eat some food and drink some beers.  I leave him to do his own thing though during the evening.  We are now sitting in reception of the hotel, waiting for our taxi to take us to Bangkok.  Dad is getting a flight back home and I am catching the overnight train to Chumphon, and then getting the boat to Koh Tao.  So excited to get there and start my diving, going to be great!

Will update you all when I can.

Ryan x

 View from my hotel balcony

 Dad and his lady friend, hopefully lady :p

 Walking street is where all the madness is, bars, gogo bars, clubs etc...

Inside walking street

 Plane to Pattaya

 Me and dad having our regular sunday lunch, at 11:30 pm after a load of drinks

 I found this menu in a resturant, FYI I didnt eat here

Dad fell over and bumped his knee, getting it drained

Happy New Year!

Woooo, happy new year!!

Hope you all had an amazing New Years Eve party, what better way to celebrate the end of a year than to party hard.  It was great spending my Christmas and new years with Lizzi and family, had an amazing new years with them.  Also, spending my time with them allowed me to get on with all my theory work for diving, which is all done :D  So tomorrow, when I leave for Thailand, I can get straight in to the diving and not worry about doing theory work, whoop whoop.

Been back in Melbourne for a few days, sorting out visas and other bits for my trip.  In a hostel room with a pretty good crowd, and spent today doing some pretty touristy things, which was fun.  Went to the top of the Eureka tower, 88th floor, what an awesome view!

So my plans for Thailand start off with me flying to Phuket tomorrow, staying there for one night then getting another flight to Pattaya to meet Dad.  Looking forward to seeing him, been a long time!  So will be in Pattaya for 3ish days, after which I will fly and ferry to Koh Tao for some scuba fun times :D

Going to be awesome

Ryan x

 

Christmas WOOOOO YEA!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Yes as always, I love Christmas.  Granted Crimbo in Australia is totally different compared to Guernsey, short days, cold weather, the christmas mission, dinner with my family and everyone round to my flat for lots of celebratory drinks.  Thankfully though I do have family in Australia, and in what feels like and most probably is the most coldest town in Australia, Warrnambool.  Its great, family christmas dinner, kinda wish I was back home though.  But anyhoo.

Staying Warrnambool for the next 10ish days, they are kind enough to let me stay with them and it saves me a whole lot of money compared to living in a hostel in Melbourne during holiday season.  The main benefit for me, I have about a week of full time theory work for my dive courses, and staying in a quiet calm house with stable internet beats a noisey busy hostel any time.  So excited, 50 days in thailand, living in a beachside hut scubadiving every day.  Bring it on!!  Looking forward to seeing my dad in Thailand, I will get to see him for a few days and then he leaves for home.  Just hoping he doesn't buy me a lady boy for Christmas!

Well I will update you all before I shoot off.

Miss you all xx

What a busy harvest!!

2 months have gone by so fast, and with that I realise I havn't exactly been keeping up my end of the bargain with the regular-ish updates.  So, as my last (short) post states, I have been a very busy chap.  In the past 8 weeks I have worked 730 hours, with the past week or two being relatively slow weeks due to bad weather.  So what have I been doing?  I suppose I better tell you :D

To start with it was mostly maintenance days, 

repairing and preparing the header (combine harvester) and chaser bin for the months to come, and with machinery this big, it takes a long time to get them ready.  An example, an oil change on you car, will probably take about 5 litres of oil and one small oil filter.  On the header, it has 4 oil filters, a precleaner and requires 49 litres of oil.  And that was just for the engine, there is also the hydraulics, pneumatics and about 20 different belts and chains to replace and so much more.  But anyway, once the work started, it was all systems go.  I started off by driving the chaser bin which is a large tractor towing an even larger trailer, which my trailer carried over 25 tons of wheat.  The task of the chaser bin is to drive alongside the header(s), allowing them to unload their wheat whilst they still harvest, then race to the silos and unload before the headers fill up.  You have to be a bit mad to do this job, not la la loopy mad, but its either full throttle or go home.  Even when fully loaded, you have to drive as fast as you can to unload in time, driving over rough terrain and bog holes with 25tons behind you going over 40mph in something taller than 2 land rovers parked on top of each other, tis fun :D

After a month or so, we started going to harvest jobs where they already had there own chaserbin, so we didnt need to take ours.  And with the main header operator getting tired of the job, he just drove the chaser bin back to the home sheds and I took over the header.  This was great, as initially it was just me and him going to the jobs, living in hotels, but now this was my show.  I had the invoice book, header, ute, work credit card and a list of jobs to go to.  For a month, I was my boss.  Organise trucks for transport, look after and maintain the machine, work my own hours, it was great.  Even the boss was really pleased with how it was going.  Every now and then he would call to ask how it was going, and every time he was happy.  But now it has come to the end, cant find any more jobs, as with how poor the weather is, a lot of farmers have lost their crops due to severe rain and hail, so now we are packing up.  Tim (my boss), has been so impressed with how well I have be doing, he desperately wants me to come back next year, and do the header from day one.  Even talks of him sponsoring me for a permanent visa.  Its tough for an average joe like me to get a permanent visa, its a different story if your a doctor or really rich.  Only way I can get a permanent is to either marry an aussie girl or part own a business.  So Tim has offered to sign over the lease for the header in to my name, go 50/50 with me on the payments and splits on the profits.  Which is a great deal for me, and also for him, but its a huge step, so I will take the year to think about it and decide next harvest what I would like to do.

So unless we find another job today or tomorrow, I have 2 days of driving the header back to the homestead, then I am finished.  Plans, hmm, not sure.  Ideally find a job for 2 weeks, but that will probably be impossible.  So will stay with Tim for a few days, then head to Melbourne and try to live a cheap life in a hostel for a few weeks.  As I'm flying out of Melbourne, I will just book one hostel for the entire time I will be there and get comfy.  Will most likely be X-Base St Kilda, which I have stayed a few times and had so much fun there.  I tried to get a hostel in Sydney for new years, all the hostels require a minimum of a 10 day booking, and with the cheapest place I could find at $55 per night, I wasn't going to pay $550 for new years!

Money wise I have done well, I figured out I would need $10,000 to pay for all my training, accommodation, travel and living costs.  Once I get my last wage from Tim which should be in a few days, I will have saved over $14,500, which for me is a hugely amazing achievement.  For those of you who know me, I don't save money well, never have.  And to have managed to save this amount is a big personal goal, and will mean that I can enjoy my time in Thailand diving and doing all these courses, and not worry about whether I am within my budget.  Obviously I will still be very careful, as I have worked so hard for this money, dont want to just waste it away.

Looking forward to getting away from these small towns, and get back in to the city and enjoy my backpacker life.  Although I will be trying to save money I'm excited to start hanging around other backpackers, enjoying the odd bag of goon, eating pasta, and spending my days lazing around St Kilda.  Hopefully will be visiting some family too, so it will be good to see them too.

Will update you again soon, a lot sooner than last time :p

Ryan xx

You cant even comprehend how amazing a lightning storm is until you have been over here, it is just out of this world!

Busy busy, o wait, I got my VISA!!!

Woohoo, it's official, I have my 2nd visa and will be in Australia for another year. Funny thing is now that I know I will be here for another year, I booked my flights to thailand. Let me run you through my current plan:
•Carry on harvest work until new year
•New year in Sydney
•Fly to Thailand 6th Jan to see dad and get my Divemaster scuba license
•Return to Cairns 26th Feb
•Start my instructor internship
•Qualified by May and working full time on dive boats
•Get my long term visa (hopefully)

Sorry for the lack of updates on here, work is going great, but oh so busy. Since I have started work, I have averaged 101 hours per week. Good for my bank acount, bad for everything else. As I am a contractor, I move to different farms all the time, so my laptop is back in Roma (with my boss). So I am writing this on my IPhone.

Have to keep this short and sweet as it has taken me long enough to type this on my phone. Everything is going good, just very very busy. Will give a better update when I have both time and my laptop.

Ryan x

Decisions decisions, what to do......

Ok, so being honest, Australia freaking rocks.  Adding to that, the most fun I have had over here has to be either in Cairns diving or my last job working on the cattle station in Ardbrin.  Currently sitting in my dorm room in Bris-Vegas (Brisbane), here for a few days until my bus transfer to Roma for the next job.  With these days, I have been hibernating in my dorm room saving money and reflecting on all the people I met and things I have done. Love scuba diving.  

In the last week, after topping up my phone with some serious credit, called all my family back home, had been a long time.  Was great to hear everyone's voices, and they too were equally happy to hear from me (I hope), although most commented on my new aussie based accent, dam.  But after subsiding my feelings of missing people back home, and taking in comments from people back home and my feelings, maybe going back to Guernsey isn't what I want.  Well, on a permanent basis, definitely want to go home and see everyone again at least for a little bit.  But what if I were to stay here, get sponsored, would I be happier here than Guernsey?  Thankfully, I still have a long time to mull over this decision.

So what am I doing now, back to the farms I go, but no mutilation of cows this time.  Just like last year, my task for 3-4 months is operating a combine harvester.  Unlike last year where my harvester was only 36' wide, 12 years old and kept catching fire, this year my harvester is 48' wide and only 2 years old.  Hopefully be arriving in Roma (inland from Brisbane) on Friday evening, and will start working this weekend.  Good thing about this job is that I will be heading a contractor team, heading south as the season progresses, ending near Sydney.  Sydney for me is going to be perfect for 2 reasons, new years fireworks and cheap international flights to Thailand for dive training.

Time to go grab some dinner me thinks.  Missing you all, and hope everything back in Guernsey-land (or wherever you are reading this from) is going well.
 
Ryan xx

 How cool are dolphins!! They were playing around Taka so cool.

              Awesome sunset on Taka  /  Me very excited about DIVING!!

 

Me n Maoko (another hostie), my Iphone made my face look out of shape

Me and Emilie 'horsing' around

 My new aussie map, I do get around

A whole lot of scuba diving!

Sorry for it being so dam long since I've updated this blog, but wow, busy much! 

For a change of pace I havn't been drinking much, if really at all, in this party based city Cairns.  Shocking.  Remember on one of my last posts, I spoke about living on board a dive boat for a few days diving the reef? Well, over the past 3ish weeks I have spent nearly all of it on board that boat working and diving.  Basically I make the beds and do the dishes, but get to dive up to 4 times a day for free and have all the board and food paid for, and its not that much work really.  Its great, infact it's amazing, basically living for free on the boat and diving everyday, problem is the food is waaay too good.  With 12 days left in Cairns, 10 of those will be spent on board at various spots on the great barrier reef, yay!

Good news, got a job sorted, starts on the 6th of October in Roma, one flight and a bus trip away from Cairns.  O yea, sold my car for $300 on top of what I paid for it, which is great.  The job is running a combine harvester, very similar to what I was operating last year in WA, but this time its a whole lot newer and in QLD.  Good thing is, $32 per hour and job finishes in February, and on new year the boss is flying us all out to Sydney for a week off.  So I am really looking forward to earning some real money.  My tax refund of $2000 will be in my account in 2 weeks, money from Paul (my old boss) of $3000 will be in my account next week and and I sold my car, so things are going well here.  

So with the money going well and lots of diving and work with Deep Sea Divers Den, they have offered me to do an Instructor internship.  I achieved my Rescue Diver certification, and after my job finishes in February I'm flying to Thailand to do my Divemaster, so much cheaper there than Australia.  And after I have done that, Deep Sea Divers Den will train me to become a dive instructor for free as long as I sign a contract to work for them for 6 months.  Obviously I havn't signed anything, as I don't have to agree to anything until February, but I would LOVE to be a dive instructor here, so much fun.  We'll see......

But anyway, on dry land for only today, so lots of washing and stuff to do before I ship out again tomorrow.

Speek to you all soon

Ryan x