Not really a newbie but here's an intro

[philly]

Been a member here for quite a while but never introduced myself properly.

So I live in sunny Cardiff aged 34, originally from Worcestershire. Working as a recruitment consultant (planning on moving to Oz this year to work) but used to run a dance(rave) club until I had a run in with the police and realised I was slowly killing myself.

First went to LOS in November 04 after hearing such good things about it from my bro who spends 8 months a year on Phuket (Nigel from Yorkshire Inn, some of you may know him), fell in love with the place within minutes and have been back 3 times since,(this meant changing jobs just to get enough time off) always travel on my own, but have made more friends in LOS than I have in UK.

Spend most of my time on Koh Samui and Koh Phangan but have been over to Phuket and spent a few nights at the infamous MTB drinking dodgy drinks, chewing even dodgier tabacco and trying to understand what the hell Nicke was saying, then ringing that bloody bell!!

I prefer the beach scene on Samui esp Ark Bar, I'm not a big mongerer and still like taking advantage of all the western girls doing the back packing thing. And the music and dxxx scene is much better on the East coast. I now leave a load of my stuff (dive gear, shorts, suntan lotion etc) on Samui as I know I'm not going to be needing them anywhere else in the world.

A few of my highlights of Thailand so far in no particular order:

Learning to dive and discovering the underwater world which covers most of the planet (they're aint no McDonalds down there, YET!)

Going round a corner on my motorbike and almost hitting an elephant (we dont get to many of them in Cardiff).

Soapy's

MTB

Mushrooms on Koh Phangan!

TG's

Meeting many good friends especially my good friend Shaun who inroduced me to profesional gambling on horse racing, nothing like being sat on a beach with a mobile phone winning £xxxx. (Cant wait for him to get out of prison so I can give up work!!) It's not often you come back from holiday with more money than you went with!

And many many more reasons why I love LOS so much.

I've also found the cure for LOS Blues, I book my next trip before I've left for the current trip. Roll on April (I was spent xmas and NY on Samui).


At this point I would like to thank Nicke, the moderators and all the b/m's (a special mention for Denver, for some reason the guy cracks me up and I cant walk past a stall selling electric fly swats without chuckling to myself) for the excellent advice and stories, you've saved me a fortune in Bhat and helped me through the cold winter nights so much. Keep up the good work!

Oh and because of a post I made on this site I got interviewed by the BBC (and I got paid) last week about the murder on Samui. The programme is on BBC 1 12/2/06 at 22.35 I think.

[Crustasian]

Liked the intro - especially about the elephant.

When my sister and husband visited me one year we were all on the porch having a few beers.Late in the afternoon my brother in law cracked up - he had just noticed that there were several elephants grazing in the field opposite.He still talks about it.