The first person to congratulate me on the sheer aching brilliance of the title today gets a gold star. Don't push, form an orderly line please.
Right, I have a laptop now and while my wallet wishes me to curl up and die quietly, I on the other hand am gonna make good use of it besides just watching a bucket-load of films, and try to do most of the writing on there thus saving me internet bills and fees. So not too much waffle here, just photos 
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The title is particularly good to describe me today yesterday, but not really the pictures as they are all super happy fun time stuff, not me in my fluctuous (yes I own that word too, as of now) mental state. It's been 20 21 days of controlled drinking, or it will be come tomorrow midday-ish, and aside from feeling chuffed with myself I'm going a little crazy with it.
This includes doses of inaccurate and randomised wrath towards nothing in particular. Also peevish. Hence the `ire`. I should shut up now lest my wallet starts its crowing again.
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A distant stork/crane/light aeroplane:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture103.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture104.jpg
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This tree, is cool. It was perched in the quiet recess' of the bird sanctuary (actually bang in the middle of a little courtyard, but it was a quiet day) and clearly was there only for decoration.
Look at Maria in the bottom corner. See the way she is looking at the tree, as if somehoe sizing it up:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture099.jpg
The charming and daring Maria, illicitly climbing one of the amazing trees that thrive through aerial roots alone. She wasn't supposed to be here, of course, but she's out of control really. Not a thing I can do.
Now I'm not sure why I wasn't climbing myself and was therefore able to take this picture, but there must have been some blindingly enormous reason because I'm well 'ard, I am. I would swung up there in a sec- no, I would have levitated up there in an instant had I wanted.
Obviously I didn't want, for some reason:
There you go moi darlin' I finally got around to posting those pictures. Rotate them with the magic of the right-click and they're all yours. At last...
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This is the right way up - if you ever wondered just how those aerial roots start, well, here you are. Very much like a gigantic, many-limbed potato only with leaves, and proper roots, and densely fibred woodstuff, and..
..okay it's not much like a fucking potato. But then a potato isn't a nut either, contrary to that silly rumour, and bananas are not herbs.
They're both actually varieties of personal defensive weaponry, elegant weapons for a more civilized age... takes anti-psychotics
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture100.jpg
Trust me, everyone, at least one of those links will be cool 
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Jungley tree things, very atmospheric although possibly only to botanists:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture098.jpg
You'll be wanting a botanist and a geologist for this one to be any fun:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture097.jpg
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A brief detour back to Mysore.
In the park outside the maharaja's palace, apart fom the well-dressed man taking a piss against a tree in full frontal view of the busy street, there were a couple of odd trees with strange fruit in them. What was that album`strange fruit` again? I'm sure someone I once knew of released one with that title.
Anyway, real non-musical (as far as I know) strange fruit. Trees. :
This one I do know, these huge seed cases are where the spice tamarind comes from. The spice is very strong and sour, and therefor immensely popular in regulated doses. You see these seed pods all over India, from little ones half an inch wide and a few inches long, to these monsters and bigger - as they get larger the outer shells become very tough and woody and as they get up to about 18" in size they could probably be used in combat
:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture264.jpg
In the hotel room in Mysore we filled ourselves silly with sweets (ohhhh my god Indian sweets... virtually lethal doses of sugar in every single one. Mmm!) and I noticed the container - now yes, I know it's only a cardboard bnox, and yes, we all know that this little symbol is innocuous and actually rather uplifting and noble in this part of the world.
That isn't stopping me from labelling this place as the Third Reich Sweetshop and Bakers GmbH, however:
It is just odd to see swastikas everywhere - even on bakery boxes - when all you've ever seen of it before has been in relation to goose-stepping numpties!
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A few pictures of houses on the way back from the bird sanctuary - I just love the architecture in India. I hope I managed to actually get some of the better buildings though; these were all taken form a taxi at full speed:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture262.jpg
Yay!
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture260.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture259.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture258.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture257.jpg
Ahhh, that's what I was looking for - these are just regular `middle class` (middle/upper caste) houses:
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Back in the wildlife sanctuary, I shall save the picture of Mari and I lest I incur much wrath (I think she looks lovely but of course I'm gonna check if I'm rioght first 
) but instead ou may have this, ridiculous picture of a grinning idiot. The bamboo looks nice, at least:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture252.jpg
There's those crocodiles as shown to you by the park, before you get into the boat:
The entrance to the park was something like 150 or 125 rupees per person (per foreigner anyway, Indian nationals pay about 15-25 rupees from memory), but they also charge you 25 rupees for every camera you have and 100 rupees for a video camera! Obviously they need to make money, but it's a bit clinical the way they've worked it out I thought. Par for the course though, so no worries.
But then the boat trip costs 500 rupees extra once you are inside...
Now this in the real world equates to around £6.50p but I am a severely cheap man and living here for a month or three makes you readjust your expenditures, anyway. I've been thinking in rupees for almost half a year now, I adjusted my thoughts very quickly on the advice of some seasoned travellers in Arambol.
So the boat was gonna cost four time the price of admission - per person!
Of course it would have been foolish to listen to me because then I wouldn't have seen any of the incredible wildlife (durr!) so Maria stepped in, paid the whole fee, and managed to snaggle the boat for one lot of rupees for us both.
She was so charming and we were so enamoured with it all that the scheduled half-hour trip became 50 minutes of wonderment on the lake.
There was another tourist, an Indian guy with a bald patch and more expensive camera equipment than I'd ever seen outside of a showroom before in my life, and he offered us a generous 25 rupees to share our little private boat.
I thought he was proper cheeky at the time, but Indians only had to pay about 25-50 ruppes for the private boats, so it was all in good favour after all. Once we returned to alnd of course we were far too overwhelmed and buoyed up by the experience to take anything for it.
It really was spectacular
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Glassy water with distant white bird creatures:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture250.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture249.jpg
You can see these for yourselves o' course:
Now have you guessed what those black things hanging from the trees are yet? :
Yes, that's right. Bloody thousands of gigantic bats!
Hopefully got some shots of them in flight - they had, quite easily, wingspans of a metre or more. They were very, very big bats. Probably fruit-eating, or so I hope
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Did I happen to mention that I think crocodiles are cool? :
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture244.jpg
This one of the egrets fluffing its feathers - and being slightly more relaxed than one would have thought being so near the carnivourous beastie::
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture239.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%202/Picture238.jpg
Finally, have a lovely tree :
Right I gotta dash - got a train to catch to Chennai (643km) then a plane tomorrow night to catch to Bangkok (1300-ish km) then a train to catch on Sunday morning to the Laos border (about 700km) and then I gotta actually get into Laos.
Phew.
Looks like it'll be fun - I wont be posting here, obviously, probably until Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday depending on what the state of the internet is in Laos.
Unless I can get online at Chennai airport and have done some work on the new lappytop, at any rate.
See ya in the new country, I hope!!