I really can’t explain what an utter ball-smasher this weather is. I’m by no means complaining cos I’d rather be too hot than working but I find it really hard to get myself up and going in this heat – after travelling yesterday we needed a day off to have a read, drink lots and watch telly. So we decided to extend our stay here by another night, sort out a cheaper hotel over the road and basically, do a bit of lounging about today and hit the sight-seeing tomorrow.

Denise decided to go for a walk about town and I settled down in the room to veg out. Watching television in a new country, I remembered I meant to make a note about one particular advert on Indian television for a product called Get Fair (“Very very fair, very very sexy”).

It starts like an old Impulse advert – you know “When a man you’ve never met before gives you flowers…” – with an Indian man walking down a sort of Venetian road, passing several beautiful white woman. He offers a friendly flirtatious smile and a wink to one of the woman who recoils in absolute horror and disgust (“Ewwwwwwww-hoooo, an INDIAN!” she might as well just say) and he goes home looking dejected.

At this point, it cuts to one of those Garnier before-and-after split-screen shots with him rubbing GetFair all over his face. Then it cuts to a quantum-nano-pento-peptide bullshit graphic showing all his brown skin being fizzled away. Looking like Marcel Marceau, he then goes back outside where the same women practically faint at the sight of him but (ho-ho-ho!) they’ve had their chance and he walks passed them all towards the camera with a smug grin on his face. Absolutely fucking nuts…

You don’t get any of that kind of nonsense here unfortunately – nearly all the telly is in Thai except for the Bloomberg business channel which seems to be basically saying that, on the one hand, we’ll be able to afford a house when we get back home but, on the other hand, we won’t be able to get a job to pay for it. Ho-hummm.

Well, after lunch (cheeseburger, chips and Chang) we went for a walk to look at the markets – Denise had also earlier spotted several 50 seater MMO cafes with everything from Lineage II to Cabal Online but, as it turned out, no World of Warcraft so that ultimate loser photo is sadly not going to materialise. Sorry Bob

We stopped off at a cafe for a coke on the way back and after ordering and sitting down, the manager came over to fiddle with the air-con switches. After looking at us with a frown on his face and running the words through his head for a few seconds, he proudly exclaimed “FAH-KING HAWT!” with a big smile on his face. We nodded enthusiastically and thanked him for putting the fan on.

We headed back to base (guess what I had for dinner?) before hitting the bar. After more Chang and pool we decided to stop via the 7-11 to pick up some Thai green-custard sticky buns (I don’t know what they’re putting in those things) and after leaving the store, some guys on the other side of the road started pointing excitedly into the open back door of an SUV and making camera gestures at us.

We crossed over to see half a dozen men jabbing bits of wood into the back of the SUV and shining torches in. Eventually, they teased out an 8 foot python (which must have made for an interesting surprise on the motorway), then one of the men used a sort of v-shaped prong on a pole to trap it’s head and moved the whole thing into the middle of the road. What do you do with a snake then? It’s obvious, you get one of the other men to get a piece of plywood and slowly mash it’s head off at the neck.

Goodnight!