Why is it so dark, it's the middle of the day? The house is freezing. Half my plants are dead. Bills outnumber Christmas cards by a factor of 10. Junk mail outnumbers bills by a factor of 100.

The car won't start. I trudge to the supermarket for some essentials: Cheddar, Stilton, that sort of thing. And some seasonal booze. Nobody smiles, nobody even looks at me. Was I ever away?

I do some washing and the kitchen floods with brown sludge. Jesus, this is worse than Cambodia.

Kayaking in the mangroves north of Ao Nang. Excellent: 4 hours on a circuit, taking in coastal caves then a very deep canyon cutting into the steep limestone landscape. There are tons of crags that you just want to climb. As you go on, the canyon gives way to a huge area of mangroves, really quiet and total wilderness - there's no other way of getting to this place and sometimes the channel was only just enough to allow a kayak to pass. Saw monkeys, weird crabs, pipefish and a big scary monitor lizard.

Cheeky monkeys. Normally live on mangrove fruit, but will do anything for a slice of water melon, even swim aboard or perform a 2m standing jump from boat to boat.

Mangrove kayaking

One-Two-Three Wall; fireshow at Wee's Bar

Missing Snow (6b+), Bad Shorts, but it's so hot, dude; Railay West bay and Thaiwand.

Brigitte (the other half of the '6c Team' as we came to call ourselves, initially half-jokingly but then we meant it, man) leading p3 of Humanality, Ton Sai Wall. Skinny arms but charmed with uniquely bendy style, every move featuring a heel-hook, toe-jam, kneebar, impossibly wide bridge or some other crafty piece of footwork. 'So you don't need muscle to climb?' a French friend asked. Trouble was, he was asking me.

Krabi. Just eaten a delicious Pad Thai at the night market, watching a red moon rise over the river. Had an excellent morning kayaking around mangrove swamps on the coast - pics will follow.

In case anyone suspects that 'What Afterlife..,' represents a mid-life crisis, I should say that it's just a passing interest. Some people want to achieve immortality through redemption, others want to achieve it through their work. I'm with Woody Allen, I want to achieve it by not dying.

Tonsai. A difficult place to leave! But the climbing's over and I'm moving on tomorrow. Today has been beautifully sunny, but there have also been days of torrential rain. In fact, the cool rainy days spent on overhanging, stalactite-encrusted limestone have been brilliant, even though I find the climbing intimidating and mentally exhausting. It's sooo steep!

Apart from a half-morning wasted with an unfortunate choice of partner (a tosser from Essex, who annoyed me so much I gave up climbing for the day and went to a Thai cookery class instead), all the climbing has been good or brilliant, and here's a list of the best. Climbers who have no interest in Thailand should look away now. Anyone else will give up soon enough...

Best crags: The Keep, Thaiwand, Eagle Wall, The Nest/Wild Kingdom.
Best routes: everything at The Keep, including Nutcracker (6c, technical wall) and Medusa's Lover (easy 6c); One-Two-Three: busy and polished but Make a Way (6a+) is smart; The Defile: Baboon's Ass (6b, reachy, slopey and pumpy), Monkey Gone to Heaven (6b, weird rounded groove, hard), Mai Pen Rai (6a+, good slab shock-horror!!); Thaiwand: Equatorial (6c, didn't bag this one, but one day), Circus Oz (p1 6a+, good position), Tyrolean Wall: Missing Snow (6b+, steep face); Ton Sai Wall: Humanality (5, 6a, 6b, 6b+, 6b, blank wall on p4 calls for a spacey 'behind you' stalactite manouvre); Eagle wall: Desayuno de Nono (6b), Lost in Space (6b), Where Eagles Don't Dare (6a+); The Nest/Wild Kingdom: Dozer Days (6c, wild overhanging stalactite) and Mutual of Omaha (6c, steep pump on good holds).

Pain? she asks. Yes! I reply. Still? she enquires, pressing on the same spot even harder. Yes! I reply. Still? she asks, thumbs mercilessly probing. Ouch! Climbing muscles! she says, pummeling hard and grinning. I Thai-box you ahaha! she grins, whacking my aching body with her clenched fists. It's only pain, I tell myself. She discovers my weak spots and exploits them mercillessly. Then she throws in a few all-in wrestling moves and I am thoroughly defeated. This goes on for about an hour, after which I'm not even sure if I can stand up.

Three days' climbing. Yes yes! But now everything hurts! Total systems failure! I know just the thing...an hour's Thai massage!

Therebefore, am reaquainting myself with the Real World in Ao Nang, where they have roads, vehicles, shops, and a MacDonalds. And Cheese! And pizza Quattro Formaggio!

And the new Kate Bush CD (for 100 Baht, or about one pound fifty; version 1.pirate). I can't play it because I've 'upgraded' my mobile travel listening system from CD-man to i-pod, so anybody reading please let me know what she's up to in her latest incarnation. What I can do is muse over the sleeve photos, and remember how I once yearned futilely and agonisingly to somehow comfort the lovely but troubled goddess who gave us This Woman's Work, which sends even more shivers up and down my spine than This Charming Man by The Smiths, and is therefore the best song in the whole world ever. For today, anyway.

Which leads us, in yet another seamless transition, to the next installment of...

What Afterlife...? I was trying to keep it descriptive, but in this case the subject matter lends itself to one or two judicious comments...
Q3. What about...Creation?
Christianity: Six days' graft, job's a good un. Welcome to the the Working Week.
Hinduism. Hinduism wins again in the colour and imagination stakes. Hindu creationism sees the current universe as one of a series of cyclical Creations, in which Shiva's Dance of Death signals the end before a new Universe is created from the old. Several creation myths then, including one involving a navel (Vishnu's or Brahma's, I forget) turning into a lotus flower that spawns Shiva, if I remember rightly. Even weirder is the Churning of the Sea of Milk (as illustrated in an Angkor bas-releif, a pic of which I posted previously), which goes like this: under Vishnu's direction, Mount Mandara, home of the Gods, is encircled by the giant multi-headed serpent (or Naga) called Vasuki. Vasuki acts as a string that spins the mountain when pulled to-and-fro, by Gods and Asuras at either end of Vasiki's body. This spinning goes on for 1000 years, mixing up the cosmic sea or Sea of Milk, while an avatar of Vishnu in the form of the giant turtle Kurma supports the mountain from below to stop it sinking. Eventually all the animals and plants and other stuff are created from the churned Sea of Milk. Meanwhile, the Gods vie for its elixir of immortality, or Amrita, so they can carry on being immortal. Whether Hindus really believes these myths, or whether they are thought of as allegorical, I cannot yet say but I'll be asking around.
Buddhism. No creation myth. The question of creation is pointless, apparently, because our senses fool us and we cannot believe that the world around us really exists in any way outside our own heads. Well, we are turning out to be an elusive religion, aren't we? Might we just be a philosophy, instead?

Hinduism seems to break from the norm again by having multiple creation myths. The Sea of Milk myth strikes me as equivalent to that favourite straw-man of Christian creationists: putting all the bits of a clock in a box and shaking it for a long time. And that will never work, right? Wrong, I say, if a) you have infinite time on your hands and b) you choose exactly when to stop so you don't shake the clock to bits again. In the case of the Sea of Milk, the added Vishnu factor presumably cuts the time down to a manageable span. Many observers have commented on the similarities between Hinduist cycles of destruction and creation, and Big Bang theory.

The Buddhist dogma of the subjectivity of everything amounts to a denial of Science, refusing as it does to allow objective truth, or falsification by scientific method. Also it's no fun, as pointless questions are usually the most interesting ones.

In many American states, Christian creationists have won a battle to teach distorted misrepresentations of conventional biology, and pseudoscientific constructs supporting creationism, some of which are quite deliberately false and misleading. They call this Intelligent Design. Modern evolutionary theory soundly based on Darwinism and mutable self-replicating molecules is a well-established theory. Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory. In any case, only deluded people think that all theories are equal. It seems to me that if you're capable of believing in creation by any one of a number of postulated greater forces for which no evidence exists, or in fabricated and falsifiable evidence supporting them, then you're capable of believing in anything at all.

Offerings to Phra Nang, a princess who controls the fertility of the sea hereabouts

Mild-mannered by day, these people drink buckets of Thai rum, coke and Red Bull by night and mutate into bug-eyed monsters. Abbing out of the through-cave at Thaiwand Wall

DWS fun: Ron (professional dog walker, San Francisco)delivers dry climbers by kayak; figures in a stalactite landscape

Unlikely islands near Railey. No prizes for spotting Chicken Island

Bayon

Found some delicious Wonderloaf today and had banana butties. Cheese obsession has melted slightly.

I dived, or (seriously, someone from America said this yesterday...) dove, yesterday: 3 good dives (doves?), but visibility was rubbish compared with last week. First dive was a wrecked ferry at about 22m; not sure about wreck diving; until the reef builds up it's a bit like going to the scrapyard for a trip out. Lots of cleaner fish nipping my legs, that was a bit freaky until I realised they don't actually bite. Much better were Shark Point and Anemone Reef. Beautiful, beautiful, just beautiful.

Also had good snorkelling a couple of days ago when I tracked a big cuttlefish for about 10 minutes, watching it constantly change colour in dazzling ripples of unbeleivable variety. How do they do that? Then when I got too close, it shot off backwards using jet-propulsion: see ya mate. They have big intelligent eyes, and brains that wired very differently from vertebrates: aliens, basically. I want to know more. And coral snakes foraging around on the sea floor - they can hold their breath for yonks, it must come with the slow reptilian metabolic rate.

Did some 'deep water soloing' out on the local islands, but couldn't psyche for the big drops. Testosterone-driven maniacs like Yorkshire Alex, and oestrogen-driven sisters from California doing it for themselves, were soloing and jumping off from 45 feet up like back injuries never happen. I was content to back off the cruxes and jump in from 15 feet, along with the majority of motley punters forming the 2-boat team. Maybe next time...

Today cooler, and didn't rain. Puurrfect for crankin'. Sent 5 quality routes at Eagle Wall, which looks like Shorncliffe or Wintour's Leap from the ground but there the resemblance happily ends. Maybe the cool season is here at last...

Ton Sai: every night there's a gathering for food and beer, usually starting the Sea of Love cafe. They have a saying here: 'Same same but different', like John Peel descibing The Fall! Nothing and everything happens day-in day-out...might just stay here for another week or two...

Stilton, Brie, Gruyere, Roquefort, Lancashire, Emmental, Jarlsberg, hard cheese, creamy cheese, cream cheese, cottage cheese, any cheese. I yearn, I desire, I lust, I ache, for cheese.

Bread, fresh bread, the smell of bread, crusty white, malted granary, baguette, oven bottom, pitta, rolls, buns, breadcakes, wholemeal, chappatti, nan, fougasse, onion-bread, croque monsieur, croissant, pain-au-chocolate.

Bread and cheese. Cheese on toast.

I have to stop now.

Lardy-boy flopping onto a bolt on Equatorial, 6c, Thaiwand Wall, Railay; and Yorkshire Alex cruising a 6b+ at Wee's Present Wall, Railay.

Bayon, Angkor

Happy Island on a day it didn't rain, and Ton Sai beach in typical weather at the moment! Bungalows, bars, shops and restaurants are hidden in the woods. No roads in; transport by longtail boat only.

Angkor temples complete with invading cotton trees

The churning of the Sea of Milk, Angkor