Apr 2007

After exchanging some more books to read Ian and I started our mission of a journey to get to Chiang Mai. It started off with a taxi to the port, a bus to a different port and had we been even a minute later we would have missed it and all our connecting transport! Got on the ferry to Don Sak, and a bus back to Suret Thani. We waited around for 4 hours in Suret Thani, we were told the bus to Bangkok would pick us up from the tour agents...oh no, we were bundled into another tuk tuk and off we went, half an hour later than expected. Our bus left Suret Thani at 7:30pm and having no sleep at 5am we arrived in Bangkok. We got a taxi to the airport in order to get our flight to Chiang Mai...it was the worst taxi ride of my life. The taxi driver was either drunk, or completely crazy! I hope the latter! Anyway, we got to the airport kind of safe and then found out we were at the wrong airport. So, picked all our bag back up and got in another taxi to the right airport. Got there abouy 6am and had to wait until 11am for check in...I did the airport tramp sleeping look for an hour!!...don't worry Mum, Ian watched the bags while he read his book that he couldn't keep his head out of! Finally we arrived in Chiang Mai at about 4pm at a cheap guest house with rooms which was lucky! We rested for a while in our lovely airconditioned room. In the evening we went to the night bizarre and had some more street food, price going down...only 35p!
Wednesday we got up late and then went for some food, we decided to ask a tuk tuk to take us on a city tour. Only it was his own special city tour...he took us to the jewellery shops of Chiang mai and all the handy craft centres. After we reluctantly walked around those places (not in the city) I then showed him the map and told him to take us back to the city! He did! We went to see some more temples, Ian was delighted with that! The weather was scortching, about 43 degrees, that's why we didn't just fancy walking around the city. It rained in the evening, and when I say rained, the heavens actually opened! It was much nicer though, really cleared the air. Thursday we just chilled out and sat by the pool after being lazy and getting up late, the weather really closed in again and it went really cloudy and hot. Each evening we've been to the night bizarre, it's so cool looking around there, see something new every night. We've also been going to a pancake man after our cheap dinner, I asked him for lemon and sugar on Wednesday and Thursday night and he didn't have it, but Friday we went back and he had the lemon and sugar for me!
Friday we went on a one day trek tour, first we went elephant riding, that was really cool. When we were on the elephants one of the others got loose, this elephant was running wild...so guess whos elephant man went to the rescue??yes, ours! So we had no man on our elephant for a while, it was pretty scary, but he was very obedient. We then bought some bananas and fed our Nelly as a treat! From there we went to a small village and met some locals, there was some small children playing in a concrete hut, they were so cute. We walked from there to Maewang waterfall and had a swim, much needed. We walked from there to Kareng village, another small village, the children were running up asking us to buy bracelets, I was soft and bought one, but then they all wanted me to buy one! The people in the village were all weaving and making scarfs, they were really nice. The coolest thing were the chickens and pigs and the little piglets! We left there and went for some lunch, traditional Thai soup, more rice and fruit! We left after lunch and went bamboo rafting which was totally hilarious! We were going down the river in the rain and then we hit a really rocky rapid!...our raft got stuck while Ian was trying to steer the back and paddle, we were almost in! Was funny! The boy guiding our raft was only about 10, and he was incredibly strong. As we went by all the local people were splashing us...as if we needed that, we were already soaked from the rain and the bad paddling of John! Then what can I say, I just sat in the middle and enjoyed the ride! We left there and headed back to Chiang Mai.
At the weekend, we spent the days by the pool, on Sunday we had Thai massage which was pretty cool. Lady was concerned about my back. It cracked enough though so I think she made it better! We went to two different night markets, both of which were really cool and cheaper than the night bizzare that we've been to the rest of the week! I had my portrait done on Saturdau night, although I don't think it looks like me at all! Ian thinks it looks like Steph off Neighbours. It was quite embarassing as loads of people were watching and then another artist sat down and started to draw me too. So, not sure if the portrait will make it back home. Today we've been to cookery school, which was lots of fun and I managed to burn my hand...not so fun! It's ok though, no need to worry! I do need to worry about how much I ate though as we HAD to eat everything that we made. So at 11am I was eating Pad Thai, at 12:30pm I had my very own Spring rolls and Tom Yam soup. By 2pm we had made a green curry and stir fried chicken with cashew nuts and rice, so we ate that. I was collapsed on the floor about to give birth to something Thai at that point!! We had some different fruits and then at 3pm we had bananas in coconut....I was so so full! Had a good day though, and I'd love to come home and cook some thai food, only thing is there's so many ingredients and at home I won't get someone handing the ingredients to me and then doing my washing up too!!
We packed our bags when we got back, bough more stuff in Chiang Mai, so more money on excess baggage...oh well! We're off back to Bangkok tomorrow, we were going to head straight to Cambodia for a few days but think we may struggle to get all that way tomorrow. Therefore we're going to stay in Bangkok for a couple of nights and then head to Siem Reap in Cambodia about Thursday. It's Ian's birthday on Weds (getting old!) so don't really want to be travelling all that way on his birthday. Heard some not so great reports about Bangkok, so a bit sceptical at the moment, but we'll see how it goes.....
Chang Mai Internet and tours:http://www.travelhubchiangmai.com

We got up and left Phuket in mini van about 7am, we drove in the van to Suret Thani where we waited for an hour to get our bus to the port to reach Koh Samui. Well, we thought a bus would arrive. Instead we got a tuk tuk and squeezed 13 people into it, bags on the roof. It wasn't very nice and I had a dead foot by the time we got dropped off again....and told to wait for another bus. So off we got, and then waited again, until we got a big coach downt to the port.Thankfully when we got to the port we were just in time for the ferry, got straight on board and off we went. On arrival at Koh Samui we couldn't find our taxi man, shortly after a nice thai man found him asleep in his van! So, we got into another van and went to Lamai beach to our hotel. The room was absolutely baking and it stayed that way for the 4 nights we were there. Trying to budget we got a room without a fan. Other than the room, the hotel was great, right on the beach with a pool aswell.
On Friady and Saturday we basically laid by the pool during the day and then walked down into the town in the evening. We've taken to eating at street vendors rather than restaurants as the food is so cheap, less than 50p a meal and it's really good and fresh too. So we've had food and then Saturday night we watched 3 games of football! Joy!! Sunday we went on a trip around the island of Samui, first visiting Mother and Grandfather Rock (photos I will not publish!) and then onto a monkey show. We got fresh coconut and watched the monkey climb the tree for coconuts. Then the sariest bit was holding the monkey!...I have a bit of a forced smile as I thought he might bite me or something!
From the monkey show we went to the Khunaram Temple where we saw a mummified monk, it was horrible, had been mummified the way he sat to meditate over 20 years ago. We then went to some waterfalls, we walked for about half an hour to get to them and I have never sweated so much. It was so so hot. When we got to the falls, they really weren't very impressive, so the sweating really wasn't that worthwhile! Seeing the elephants and the littel playful gibbon where we got dropped off were much more satisfying! the gibbon was so cute, he just kept jumping around allover everyone, his face was so sad when we left!
From there we went to Nathon Town, had some lunch and a little walk around. There wasn't too much there apart from a few shops. I bought a lovely big sunhat, which is already getting annoying to carry around!
We then went to see big buddha, and big it was! Outside the temple was a pile of bricks, you could donate some money and write your name on a brick to help fund building the temple. So, Ian and I wrote our name on a brick. Our last stop was the Plai Laern temple, a big huge statue with lots of arms, the area was in water with thousands of catfish in it. They were all coming to the surface for food. When we visited they were also in the process of building a huge laughing Buddha. The temple was really beautiful. In the evening we into the town back to the food carts and then watched the Villa game, why can't we win!!

We left Krabi and just aboard this strange open bus and bus surfed down to the port to get the boat. There were hundreds of people jammed onto this tiny boat to go to Phi Phi. It took about 2 hours to get there,and the 2 hours weren't very comfortable. We arrived in Phi Phi, found a room and then a little man put our bag on a big wheely thing and took them to our Up Hill Cottage. Sounds more special than it was! We were in the tsunami evacuation zone, so at least we were safe. Phi Phi is just like a little island village, small tourist resort with shops, restaurants and bars. There was a lot of construction going on there and seeing the pictures of what it was like after the tsunami, they've done well to get it looking like it is so fast. We went for some food, sat on the beach and then for a couple of drinks to watch the football...great! Met a couple of Villa fans in the pub who live right next to my Grandma and Grandad, which was random, small world!! We went to bed and were woken at 4am by the loudest thunder I have ever heard, it was so scary, I wondered what was happening. I thought the building was going to fall down! The next day the weather was beautiful and we had a wonder around the town and then sat on the beach for the afternoon, it was really hot. In the evening we met up with Kaz and Nikki who we met in Krabi, had a few drinks and watched some more football!
Monday the weather was pretty dull but we booked to go on a boat trip. Kaz and Nikki decided not to go because of the weather, but we had to as it was our last day on Phi Phi. It turned out to be a good day really as it would have been too hot if the sun was blazing. We first stopped to see some monkeys and did a bit of snokelling, I sat out the first snorkel as Ian went in and said it wasn't great. We then went off in the longboat to Bamboo island, we threw rice at white crabs and watched them carry it along the beach. I went snorkelling and got a little scared as I was surrounded by thousands of small fish. Everywhere I looked or swam they were there. I soon got out of the water, but went back in to combat my fear! We cruised then to the north of Phi Phi Don, the island we were staying and jumped in the sea for a snorkel. The coral and the fish were amazing, loads of colourful fish and one which was huge. I got a bit freaked out by the long tailed black sea urchin with illuminous orange eyes, I was scared it was going to prick me! I was getting so close to the coral and the fish, it was great. From the really good snorkelling we went to Phi Phi Lay, this is the island where 'The Beach' is filmed. We went by some caves, which people had set up home in. The sea was crystal clear, it was beautiful. We took a little walk around and did some more snorkelling which wasn't even close to being as good as the last place. We watched the sun go down and cruised back to Phi Phi Don. It was a good day out, great to do some more snorkelling. We went for some food and then chilled for the evening.
Left Phi Phi, the man wheeled our stuff down to the port and then when we got there it started to pour with rain, we made it just in time! Only got a bit wet. The boat to Phuket was far better than that from Krabi, it was actually a proper ferry. We arrived in Phuket later than scheduled, but got a van to Patong Beach. Arrived at a hostel and luckily managed to get a room, I didn't fancy wondering around in the rain trying to find somewhere. We had a walk around Phuket and my first impressions weren't very good! It's really touristy and full of retired men and common people! (to put it nicely!) It's expensive too, which is not how Thailand is meant to be. When it stopped raining we sat on the beach for the afternoon and stayed and watched the sun set. The evening in Phuket was even more bizarre, it's very hard to even put the place into words. People joke about old men with Thai girlfriends, well we sat outside a bar in Patong beach and just watched the world go by. Caberet shows, lady boys, thai boxing and white men walking down the street with up to 3 Thai girls on their arms. It's crazy. We sat at breakfast this morning and apart from Ian and I there were just single guys in there or with their Thai lover, I just can't understand it. I'm actually getting very irritated by it all, I don't know what's worse really, the ugly white men with the girls, or the sad Thai girls. Anyway, I would only recommend Phuket to people just to see the strange goings on, otherwise the place is not nice. It's like being in Magaluf, but a lot worse! Thankfully we're leaving here tomorrow, I can say this is one place I won't be coming back to! The one thing that is interesting is the photos around of the tsunami and how this place was destroyed, you'd never know it had happened. Tonight I'm sure we'll spend the evening in disbelief again watching all the strange people (I don't know, maybe I'm the strange one here!). We're leaving here at 7am to go to Ko Samui on the eastern side of Thailand.

We left Penang early with 10 of us jammed into a mini bus. We crossed the border fine, but had to pay to get into the country as it was apublic holiday. It's Songkran the buddhist new year. Can you believe they charged us 15p...bloody cheek hey! 3 and a half hours later we were dropped in a place called Hai tao in Thailand. We soon realised that we didn't really want to be standing around as Songkran is where all the locals just have a 2 day long water fight!! Blessed with water for the new year. It was complete carnage everywhere, traffic jams, people on trucks just driving around throwing water over people and people at the sides of the roads with water guns. Anyway, we had to wait at a place in order to get another mini bus to Krabi. I needed some money as I had no thai baht, so I thought I would walk to the cash machine. People were all nice to begin with, sprinkelling me with a few drops of water and oils to say happy new year and then I just started getting buckets of water tipped over me. I was absolutely drenched! I came back dripping...the worst of it was that the cash machine wouldn't give me any money! We got in a mini bus with a crazy driver and it took us ages to get out of Hai tao as the streets were just grid locked with people throwing water and white powder all over everyone and the cars. I felt most sorry for the people on the mopeds! On our way to Krabi thre mopeds were getting stopped and blessed in every town we passed through.
We arrived in Krabi after the drive with a bit of a mad man and got here about 6pm, so we travelled all day. Went to get some money and still the cash machines wouldn't work. I phoned the bank as there was Ian and I and a couple who couldnt get money and we had nothing between us. Friday 13th and a problem with visa and getting soaked! Great. We waiting ages, and as it was a holiday there was nowhere to change money either. Luckily I had a non visa card and got some money so we could get some food and a few drinks with Kaz and Nikki. Thankfully visa did eventually sort out their problem!!
We're just waiting around at the moment as we are waiting for our boat to go to Ko Phi Phi, the island where 'The beach' was filmed.

We got up fairly early and took a taxi to the bus station in Kuala Lumpur. We arrived at 8:30am as they told us to and still be 9am we were boarding the wrong bus! The bay they told us to get on at had the wrong bus in it...we had a bit of a panic as we didn't want to miss it, but then it turned up about 10 mins late. So, on we got, bus looked fairly good, ok inside. We sat on the bus for 45mins while different people got on and off, people were chucked off and asked to move seats, luckily we managed to stay on the bus and in the seats that we were in. So, and hour late we headed north to Penang, an island off the North west coast of Malaysia. We were going about 30mph and the bus was making terrible noises, and we didn't stop for 4 hours and there was no toilet on the bus! Anyway, we had a short toilet stop and a couple of hours after we arrived in Penang...not in George town where we wanted to be though! Some man took us and another man in his van to George town and dropped us on Love lane. Some luck came our way when we were dropped right outside a nice guesthouse all very new inside and very cheap too, bonus!! We got into the room and then decided to go out and get some food as we thought we'd have a stop on the bus, but didn't so hence hadn't eaten all day. In KL we ate in the mall as recommended by lonely planet, so we thought we'd try the food in the mall in Penang...bad move. The duck looked lovely in the picture so Ian and I chose the same dish, mistake! The duck was like all the bad bits of a duck churned together and even the rice tasted nasty, and how can rice be nasty!!....Believe me it was! So, we picked at the food and then decided we really couldn't eat it, so we went somewhere and paid a pound for a meal rather than 50p!!! They do say you get what you pay for! To top off the bad day we went to the cinema and watched a very bad film with English subtitles, I'll say no more!
Thursday we spent the day looking around Penang, we ended up going to most of the places on the Penang Heritage trail, but weren't actually planning to do the trail. We went to a couple of temples, a mansion and then to the Penang museum which was actually quite good and fairly interesting. From there we walked down to Cornwallis fort, where we saw the obvious, some cannons and there was a small gallery there and a prison cell which Ian locked me in!! We visited another temple and a mosque and then went down to the shopping centre where I was very naughty and bought 4 pairs of shoes. The shoes in this very nice shop were beautiful and I just had to do it, it was the shop I resisted in KL, but I couldn't do it again! The most exciting part of the day was getting back from the mall, we got on a trishaw. It was fab, I loved it. Currently trying to upload the video, but not sure it's going to work on this slow computer! In the evening it chucked it down with rain yet again and we just made it to the red garden food court before we got soaked!

Hey all, hope everyone had a nice easter weekend. I didn't do anything for easter although I did manage to have half a bar of dairy milk!
The hostel we're staying at in Kuala Lumpur is really nice, 'The Haven Guesthouse' I'd recommend it. Only thing is the nocturnal guy that has been in our dorm for the past couple of nights, I didn't get too much sleep last night.
Yesterday we spent the day exploring the city and one day was enough really, there isn't heaps to do here. The night we arrived we went to look at the Petronas Towers (twin towers), looked really spectacular at night although from where we were standing there was lots of buildings in the way of them. So, on exploration of the city we saw an advert in the hostel for a free city tour. We walked a few kms to the pick up point to find that it wasn't running and we needed to book on. From there we did our own city tour, heading first to the Menara KL tower. The 4th largest in the world (Number 1 is the CN tower in Canada which I went up 2 years ago). We took the lift to the observation platform and got an MP4 player (all mod cons here!) to watch and listen about the city. It was pretty cool. We got some good views although it was misty because it was raining around the tower. The view of the towers was pretty cool, as you can see in the photos.
From the tower we headed to China town and then to another street to visit a couple of temples. From the temples to the train station which is great architecture and then onto the National Mosque. I didn't think the mosque was all that great really as it was quite modern and I prefer the older style islamic mosques, we could see an amazing one from the tower. We couldn't go in the mosque as it was prayer time. From the mosque we headed to central market and then back through china town, by this time it was about 9pm and the place was really bustling with people. Lots of men saying 'I give you good price'! From the first whole day here we saw loads and I really like the city, it's very metropolitan.
Today we ventured back down to the towers, we found the good place to take photos. They were really amazing. We spent some time in the shopping centre at the bottom of the towers and then spent the rest of the day touring other shopping centres. On the one floor of the shopping centre you had all the big names, Mont Blanc, Hugo Boss, Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Guess, and many more...I couldn't afford to be there! On that floor you had to pay to go to the toilet and on the other 6 you didn't...cheek! However we did go into the Louis Vuitton shop later today so that we could have a look at a real bag as we've seen so many fakes! To be honest, the fakes look exeptionally good! So, we've spent most of the day in just 3 of the many malls in Kuala Lumpur, they are huge! We went to the top floor of the Times Square shopping mall for our dinner. Lovely food and only cost a quid, bargain!! This shopping centre was huge, the food was on floor 10 and there was a theme park running from floors 5-10. It had a really big roller coaster, have to say I'm not sure I'd have wanted to go on it. There was also a bowling alley and cinema, not to mention the hundreds of shops! It's crazy as I don't see how so many malls can keep making money as there wasn't a great deal of people in them.
Oh, by the way, weather's still humid and overcast and currently raining!
Tomorrow we're catching the bus early in the morning, heading for Penang, north west Malaysia. Hope all's well, lots of love xx

We arrived in Singapore after a nice Qantas flight, cabin crew weren't quite as miserable as on previous flights. We also got a whole bar of dairy milk rather than just a bite size one...bonus! After eating the food Ian and I both decided to save our chocolate. Anyway, I'm glad I did because as we got off the plane I started to get really bad stomach ache. The subway and walk to our hostel as far too much effort and by the time I got to the hostel I had full on bad tummy. We booked an 8 bed dorm over the internet, only to find that the room had 16 beds, just what I needed when I felt so rubbish! So, I spent all night being sick, drinking water and crying with pain, and also watching and listening to 14 other people coming into the room at different times in the morning, and of course lots of snoring...I hate dorms! We managed to change rooms in the morning to a 5 bed dorm where I spent much of the day sleeping. Managed to get up in the evening and go down and watch a dvd.
The following day I didn't feel great but didn't want to waste any more time in Singapore so we got out for about midday and went to explore. We went down to the river and had a look around the Singapore art gallery was pretty good although Ian doesn't like abstract art which causes a few ructions. From there I was struggling to stand up as I wasn't feeling great so we walked to the famous 'Raffles hotel'. We had lunch there, we managed to get our lunch and a drink for cheaper than a big mac meal or boots meal deal, so it had to be done. A good start to getting my appetite back. We left Raffles and went down to Merlion park where we expected to see green grass, there was none of that though. The Merlion is Singapore's land mark, it's a big concrete fish with a lions head. After we went on a boat tour down the Singapore river, it was a really good way to see the city + I didn't have to walk anymore! Clarke Key was really nice with lots of bars and restaurants,looked lovely from the river. After our boat journey we returned to the hostel on the subway and spent the evening relaxing.
Friday we headed to the island south of Singapore city 'Sentosa', we got the subway to the harbour front and then got an extremely high cable car over to the island. There was a cruise ship docked in the port and we went over it, it was huge, 4 spas, pool, basket ball court, mini golf all on the top deck that we could see. We had a good view of the city from the cable car. When we got to the island it was packed and we soon realised that it was a bit too touristy! We sat on the beach for a couple of hours doing a bit of cloud bathing! We left the island and on the way back went along the river, taking some photos of the banks. We went to the Asian Civilisation museum at the cheap time between 7-9pm, but didn't sepnd long there as we both found it rather boring so we headed back to the hostel.
Saturday was a bit of a job day, post office, booking bus and hostel for Kuala Lumper and job applications for myself. We went out down to Clarke Quay about 4pm, we got some food in Hooters! I lived in Nottingham for 4 years and never went to Hooters, but we were in need of some non Asian food! We looked around the shops and then got the subway and a bus to the Night Safari Zoo. Got there about 8pm, it was really cool. Saw lots of animals, mainly nocturnal. There were lots of deer, buffalos, giraffes, zebra, bats, lions, but my favourite was the leapords that we got to see really close up and the asian elephant with huge tusks. On the way back from the night zoo, Ian dropped his wallet on the bus, luckily we weren't too far from the bus office so he got it back. But we didn't arrive back at the hostel until about mid night.
I liked Singapore, but I'd like to go back there with lots of money as it's definately a big shopping place and a place to go out for nice meals and drinks on the river. It surprised me how everything was in English and how many people spoke excellent english. We left at 9am this morning (Sunday) for Kuala Lumpa and arrived here about 4pm. It was so hot in Singapore I could barely cope at times, just so humid and it seems KL is the same!