Kevin Muldoon

After enjoying a strong British Pound for a year or so, the strength of the Britiains currency has been hit hard in the last few months. This really hit home a few weeks ago when I was over in Dublin. The cheapest drink I bought was €5.50 however most drinks cost €7 or more, particularly in the city centre pubs.

Due to the poor strength of the pound, 7 Euros is around £6.80. To put that into perspective you need to look at prices from where I live. You can get a pint in the local weatherspoons pub for about £1.50 but most pubs charge about £2.20 for a pint. In glasgow (the closest city to me) the cost of a pint is between £2.50 and £3 on average. I love going over to Dublin but it is just so expensive just now, especially if you plan on drinking a lot!

The pound doesn’t fare too well against other currencies either. When me and my friends went to New York in March earlier this year we were getting around $2 to £1. You now get a little over $1.4 to the pound.

It really does make things harder when you are travelling and if I needed any convincing, I had another reminder this morning. I need to take about 40,000 baht to Thailand for my arrival to pay for training and accomodation. The UK Post Office is offering 47.2 baht to £1 on their website but the local exchange place gave me around 47.9.

When I first went to Thailand you got about 75 baht to the pound, more than 50% than you are getting just now. It’s still cheap to live in Thailand compared to the UK but certainly not as much as it used to be.

I’m planning on going on a few more trips this year so I’m crossing my fingers the strength of the pound will return.

I got back yesterday morning after a great weekend in Ireland. It was great catching up with all my friends. We went out in Bray on Friday and Sunday night and on the Saturday we stayed out in the city centre of Dublin.

I didn’t take many pictures but my friends did. However, here is one from the Friday night I did manage to take. On the left is one of my best friends Andy, I’m in the middle, and on the right is my mate Dave from Manchester who I travelled through asia with for a few months and 8 months in Australia and New Zealand.

Thailand

The other day I mentioned that I have a longer trip coming up and I’m sure you can tell by this posts title that this trip is to Thailand.

Around 2 weeks ago I decided to go to Thailand to train at a Muay Thai camp. It’s something I’ve thought about since coming back from New Zealand 2 years ago and I just thought to myself, what’s stopping you! So the next morning I called the Thai consulate and arranged an appointment on the Friday to get my passport stamped for a 2 month visa. When I get there I will have the option to extend it for a 3rd month by going to the immigration office.

I looked at dozens of Muay Thai camps all around Thailand and checked loads of reviews and feedback from people who trained at them before. The one I finally decided on is Rawai Muay Thai, which is based in the south of Phuket. One of the reasons I chose this camp was that the camp gets a lot of foreigners so outside of training I will meet a lot of new people and hopefully make some new friends too. Something which was important to me as although I have did a little Muay Thai before, I’m travelling myself over there and didn’t want to be bored out of my head between training sessions i.e. I wanna have some fun too!

I’m really looking forward to the training, which should be about 6 hours a day : 3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the afternoon. And it will all be in the sunshine! It’s been so cold in Scotland in the last month which is another reason to go somewhere hotter.

The cold weather has made training really hard for me because I have asthma (this is known as Exercise-induced Asthma). I train about 6 days a week and would consider myself one of the fittest at my Taekwondo school but the weather has made me really struggle, which has been incredibly frustrating. The first 40 mins of training are horrible and I find it hard to breathe but after that my breathing is ok and I start being more active.

I will be staying in a nice bungalow on the beach too. Here are some pics of where I will be staying :

The room boasts :

• King Size bed
• Cable TV + DVD player
• Kitchen / kettle / toaster / blender / microwave / fridge
• WiFi internet
• Electronic Safe
• Hot Shower
• Aircondtioned
• Daily maid service + change of bed linen every week.

The wifi internet is obviously an essential feature. During the afternoon I will be able to check my emails and make sure my internet sites are ticking over ok. I may be tired in the afternoon so there’s a chance I will go for an afternoon nap as I’ll have to get up around 6am every day and be ready to train between 4pm-7pm later on. However, I should get at least 3 hours to make sure everything is ok. My main concern is my blog Blogging Tips and thankfully, I have a fantastic group of authors writing for me so I don’t have to worry too much about it.

I’ve been pretty busy the last week or so getting things arranged but this has allowed me to see how many emails I get everyday and the amount of work I’ll need to do over there.

I’m going to Belfast between 31st December and 2nd January as my brother is having a party and then I leave on 4th January 2009. Which means I have about 2 weeks to get everything organised, which isn’t perfect seeing as it is over the festive period but I’m sure it will be ok.

One of my best friends (Andy, in the first picture) is having his 30th birthday in February and around 10 of our friends from England and Ireland are coming over for it so a big part of me wants to be back for that. However, my visa allows me to stay a little longer. I’ll probably decide once I’m over there how long I stay.

I’ll try and update this blog when I’m over there and show you some pictures from my training and my bungalow etc but it’s difficult for me to know how often I will update the blog until I’m over there and I know how good the net connections are and how much free time I have

I fly from Glasgow to Dubai to Kuala Lumpar and then the next morning I fly to Phuket so I’ll arrive at the camp on 6th January. I travel back from Bangkok to Glasgow via Dubai. This will allow me to catch up with a friend who lives in Bangkok (my friends big sister Lynn). And I’ll probably be meeting up with my mate from Derby, Chris, who I haven’t seen since New Zealand. All in all it should be a fantastic trip and I can’t wait to get over there.

So the next two weeks for me will about saving money and keeping my fitness up. As I said, I consider myself pretty fit however I’m not currently training 6 hours a day so I’ll have to improve my cardio and more importantly, I will have to let my body adjust to training in a hot humid country such as Thailand.

Speak to you soon

Kevin

I’ve been incredibly busy in the last week sorting some things for a big trip I am going on. I will tell you all more about this next week when I have time as I’m up early tomorrow morning to head to Dublin for the weekend. More specifically, I will be staying in Bray (which is just south of Dublin) at my friend Robbies.

I’m really looking forward to it as a lot of my friends from travelling a few years ago are going. We all travelled through asia together for a few months about 4 years ago but since then we have made a great effort to meet up 2 or 3 times a year (and I have went travelling again with two of the lads for 8 months too!).

As well as the Scottish lads (myself and my mate Andy), 5 of my friends from England are going over too (2 from Manchester and 3 from Derby) and of course, my friends from Ireland will be there. We’re there from Friday to Monday so it’s safe to say we will be having a few beers. My brother might be coming down for a few beers too from Belfast. All in all it’s going to be a great weekend.

I’ll tell you more about my big trip coming up next week when I return. Hope you all have a great weekend