we played at FAT festival ('the fattest music festival in all worlds') here in bangkok which is a jaw slackeningly beautiful and turbofun city. our new friends onsiri and note have been showing us round- jesus- emerald buddhas, statues in the sky,... we will return here, to play gigs with darren drumming instead of the MPC, and to eat more of thailand. the festival itself was like nothing i've ever experienced- 100,000 people- it's terrifying playing in front of 1000... darren fell flat on his face off the drum riser, having no right arm to break his fall. everybody loved it.

at a party afterwards i declared myself to be 'MAOSAD!' ('FUCKING DRUNK') to everybody through the microphone, rousing an enthusiastic 'MAOSAD!' from the assembled crowd. (i later found this crowd to be largely made up of the top folks of the thai music business, MTV asia, and so on.) i then attempted to use voodoo to be darren's phantom right arm while he took to the drums to render madonna's 'like a prayer', with pump from apartmentkhunpa on guitar, note on vocals and mr will hall on triple backflips.

having spent the next few days on the indescribably luscious beaches of koh samat we were sitting on the beach after dinner. all that day i'd been considering swimming out to the sunbathing raft tethered offshore- a mildly taxing swim followed by a spell of lying in the sun imagining camus' characters who hang out thinking existentially on rafts. somehow though, i'd procrastinated and the sun had set.

down where the sea lapped the shore in the dark, you could see this strange glowing plankton that ights up kind of blue when you disturb it- a swim seemed a good idea. we were warned that paddling was the best course of action however, as the waters contained not only sharks, but a ripe amount of really nasty jellyfish who come out at night to fuck you up.

in the shallows, there was a notable absence of magic glowing stuff, so joe, me, and darren (with his broken wrist held aloft out of the water) ventured a bit further out, to escape light pollution. i've never swum in the sea at night before, and going out of your depth feels a lot scarier when it coincides with the near-total disappearence of all light around you. no magic here, we concurred.

at this stage the consensus was that this was getting creepy, but for the purposes of experience we should swim out to the oily black outline of what looked like the camus raft. fear, black fear, rose in my spine with every stroke propelling me over the dark unknown beneath. our semi-regular shouts to each other asking if we were all ok began to assume the shrill tenor of choirboys at the end of their careers. our replies to each other had by now veered from 'this is ridiculous' to 'FEAR ON' to 'I'M FUCKING SHITTING MYSELF.'

time distorted and after 3 hours we reached the raft and in abject terror, scrambled onto the bastard, and panted, coughed, and eventually high fived.

after more breathing, joe stood up shakily to take a piss, at which point out of nowhere a bright light nearby began heading across the water towards us, it's beam highlighting joe's golden arc. apparently a curious fisherman was coming to look at joe pissing, which he did, then when the piss ended, he revved his boat engine and left without a word or a gesture.