101 Challenges:

With the two of us not talking and with no knowledge of the other brothers whereabouts, for one day and one night, we were away from each other - the longest time since starting this journey.

Facing a day of nothingness and fear of being chatted up by a man (apparently everyone in this country is male), Lindsay decided to go into town and finally bought a replacement camera. Simple, but, Lindsay also passed a dentist on the way to the photo-shop and so (in his never ending quest of getting his leg over) he vainly went to get his teeth whitened too. Knob.

Happy with the results, he skipped joyfully out of the surgery and all the way back to the hotel. Sadly though, and much to his huge disappointment, even his new American Actor's smile can't aide him in getting laid.

How hurtful it is to his fading self pride that, even in a place with tens-of-thousands of hookers, hundreds and hundreds of ping-pong bars, sex parlors, brothels, strip joints and everything in between - he still can't lose his now-fully-grown-back virginity.

You'd at the very least think (or even hope for the boy) that a 65-year-old retired street gal or a Thai-Ladyboy (even an ugly one) would go for him - but no. The dry spell forever continues - at least he'll stand a better chance of getting into heaven for being pure again though.

Anyhow, with no family or friends to confide in, Lindsay decided to meet up with Natasha and K - who he's been chatting to on Facebook for a while. These two amazingly brilliant people are our “contacts” in Thailand and are the one’s who will make or break all our Thai Challenges. Obviously, Lindsay’s very impressed with his “new” teeth;

The conversation started formally, at an Irish Bar. In Thailand. Naturally.

Very quickly (as experience always shows) Lindsay managed to degenerate everything into a massive piss-up. We’ll never know what the hell we’ve planned, not planned, half-planned or arsed-up altogether. Stay tuned - we're as excited and bewildered as you!

Lindsay then popped into a taxi and was taken directly home after K helped to explain to the driver that he was not to stop anywhere for Ladies. The twelve attempts made earlier that night of handing wads of cash to street-hookers and having the money thrown back at him with looks of pure disgust have hurt his feelings. He's given up altogether on the search for sex now. Can anyone help? Perhaps a "Lay Lindsay, Ladies" campaign should be set up.

So, the next day, Lindsay met up with Gemma from the couple of nights before and sent Lee an email saying he was leaving Bangkok with his new friend, and that the two of them would be heading for Ko Tao (an island on the East Coast of Thailand) at 20:00 if Lee wanted to join them.

This was all arranged in that afternoon. Lindsay and Gemma spent nearly 2 hours with possibly the funniest Thai man in the World. Mr Thai. The two newly-found-traveller-buds asked to go to Krabi, but everything was fully booked and so, our smaller than the average man friend, booked them to Ko Tao;

If you want anything at all in traveling terms, go to this man – he is simply amazing! Even if you end up 200 miles East of your desired destination, it's worth the added hastle to be in this mans company for any amount of time;

Mr Thai (not his real name - It's probably John or John-Sang etc)
A-7-A16/95 Rambuttri Village Inn
Soi Rambuttri, Chakapong road, Pranakorn, Bangkok, 10200
Telephone : 0228208935

With the trip booked, Lindsay and Gemma had about 6 hours to kill. So, the graceful young thing that is Gemma stupidly listened to Lindsay as he mentioned teeth whitening for all of those 300 minutes. Gullibly, she obliged to try and copy his amazing Hollywood smile – the wimp that she is though, her squeals of pain led to huge fits of laughter from Lindsay, and the staff, but also led to numerous potential customers leaving the on-the-road dentist and opting for a less torturous alternative ;

And here he is again, having some pre-bus drinks with the girls and, not surprisingly, showing off his amazingly white gnashers with Gemma (who’s aren’t as gleaming we’d like to add) - 101 ways to arse-up a photo;

Anyhoo. Remember that Lindsay had sent an email to Lee? Well, unfortunately, Lee only read said email at 19:55 - as he had been in bed dying with the same affliction Lindsay was suffering from as we entered Thailand. Only, he had no medicine to aid his recovery, or at least suppress the agony the coughing and fever was causing. Obviously, Leprosy is spreadable by air.

In this email, there was an apology for cutting Barbie’s hair and so Lee went to meet his younger bro. Wary though, that the “sorry” wasn’t genuine and that Lindsay just wanted a close enough encounter to grab the computer back. Obviously, awakening up from his demented stupor the other night, he’s now remembered the plot.

Hastily, Lee accepted the invitation of forgiveness and met up with his forever smiling brother. Somehow, Lee managed to book a ticket, get checked out of his hotel and make his way to the bus in blinding discomfort – all within 5 minutes flat. A record?

Due to his late booking Lee had to get a different bus and boat than Lindsay and Gemma's. He literally clambered on board, sat down and passed out with exhaustion.

Throughout the entirety of the journey, sweat was dripping from the end of his nose, chin and the back of his hair. To any onlookers, he must have looked like the most unattractive travel companion. More so to the poor girl who sat down beside him.

When he wasn’t freezing with the air conditioning on, he was wrapped so tightly in a blanket that he was on fire. It didn’t matter in which of these two conditions he found himself in - the sweat flowed all the way to Ko Tao.

Lindsay and Gemma on the other hand, were already relaxing at some harbour in the middle of nowhere when the sun came up;

This sunset would have been enjoyed much more fully if it had not been for Gemma's insomnia which in turn, led to Lindsay's insomnia, a hot and stinking coach, wearing the same sweat soaked clothes for 20 hours, and some japanese man constantly poking Lindsay with what he can only pray to God was, a finger.

12-or-so-hours later, at around 9:30 am, we all reunited at another harbour on Ko Tao after a 2 hour cataraman hell-trip. Much to Lindsay's own surprise, he's now scared of boat trips too - as well as plane trips, beasties, cliff jumping and possibly women. The boat was jumping everywhere - bouncing around like a bouncy thing on water which seemed as hard as rock.

The two of us cuddled each other before calling each other w*nkers - that's our way of apologising and making up with each other. Gemma just looked on blankly. We were now friends again. Brothers in arms.

Eventually, we all booked rooms at a local resort. Everyone of us in a bad way. The two of us still at deaths door and Gemma looking bloody rough from lack of sleep - we decided there was only one thing for it. Hit the beach.

We stumbled and hobbled in a line, looking and sounding like characters from Trainspotting (or like how 3 Dundonian’s - after a 56 hour bender would appear to walk, talk and act before either being arrested or collapsing from an amazing effort) to a gorgeous little peice of almost white sand.

Surrounded by amazingly beautiful beaches, gorgeous clear oceans and over hanging palm tree’s – you’d think we’d have loads of pictures of the natural beauty around us. Nope.

Instead, Lindsay spotted a naked man sunbathing (probably German) and so, decided to take, not one, not two, but three of the following pictures;

After a 2 hour swim, and a further 45 minutes drip drying (none of us brought towels) we copped on to the possibility that Dundonian’s may actually have a decent thing going on, and so we headed off to a nearby beach bar. We only had two bottles of beer each, but even this miniscule amount of alcohol intake wasn’t good for any of us. Neither of us realised that we were suffering from massive sleep deprivation, dehydration, sun-stroke - possibly because we were all delirious.

A few hours later, we headed off for dinner. But first we stopped for a shave.

Now, we’ve had numerous shaves throughout our little trip. This one looked to be one of the best ever though. The “barber” was a 6”3-bigger-than-Lindsay-Ladyboy. Seriously, she would have made “The Rock” look like a welk.

Surely, if anyone was going to give a smooth shave it was going to be this mountain of a woman. After all, she’d have billions of experience. Turns out, no. She was quite literally sh*t. For someone who would have to shave 19 times a day, how the feck could she have done this to Lee?

Absolutely knackered, we embarked on one of the most exciting nights we’ve had so far. During our meal, no more than 7 words were exchanged by either of us. We hadn't fallen out - it was just, none of us could keep our heads from bouncing off the table. Lindsay dangerously ordered soup - but through fear of him drowning, Lee politely removed the untouched dish away from where his wee brother's head would surely land.

The three of us all stared blankly at a TV which was showing the equivalent of the Mighty Ducks movie, except the subject matter was Basketball (it had Martin Lawrence in it and was about a number of kid’s we’d have bullied at school ourselves, who go on from being crap at the game, to winning a national championship).

None of us would have liked that movie in any other circumstances, but we all agreed that if you resemble Trainspotting characters and are suffering from dehydration, lack of sleep and sunburn - it was the best movie ever! Will we ever know the film title? Will we ever care enough?

None of us touched the food we all ordered. The effort it would have taken to lift a fork or spoon was too much.

It’s 21:30 and as Lee writes this (and Lindsay edits it to be funny the next day), Lee lies in bed hungry for his fingers to finish these last two paragraphs as he feels sleep calling for me. This time it’s too loud to ignore.

Lindsay is already dead to the world, as is Gemma. Oh, here are some pictures of where we’re actually at (once Lindsay stopped zooming up some fat mans ass);

Goodnight