Aranyprathet to Bangkok to Chiang Mai!

After crossing back into Thailand, we headed straight to the train station because our plan was to make it all the way to Chiang Mai in one go! We got to the station in Aranyaprathet very early, so we sat in a cafe for a couple of hours and waited around.

On this train we managed to get some padded seats and were by ourselves for most of the journey so it wasn't too unpleasant! During the journey I insisted on buying a mystery bamboo stick full of rice, which turned out really nice and sweet! While we were trying to eat it and old Thai couple sat near us laughed as we struggled to work out how!

We got to Bangkok with plenty of time before the overnight train to Chiang Mai, but there were no tickets left! There were also no tickets for the next day at first but as we were leaving 2 tickets for the next day were cancelled so we booked those straight away!

Because of the extra day we headed straight to Khao San to the same guesthouse as before and had an early night.

On a whim, we decided to visit Dusit Zoo, which turned out to be really fun! We managed to touch some elephants, see a shark exhibit with only 1 decent shark and a lot of dead fish in tanks and rode a pedalo round the lake with monitor lizards swimming around us!

In the evening we went to our train and struggled to get much sleep overnight. We had breakfast in bed, which was incredibly overpriced and absolutely disgusting! It made me very very sick, including a fever which had us worried!

We wondered around Chiang Mai for what felt like and eternity finding hotels either full or filthy. We eventually settled on a nice enough hotel in a decent location within the city walls.

The next day we stayed in bed with food poisoning, which was very unpleasant! The day after, we planned to explore the city but couldn't be bothered in the end. We bought train tickets to Bangkok, just in case everything was fully booked again and the best we could get was a carriage without air con! Next, me and Imogen shed some hair. Imogen's eyebrows and my beard! It was pretty weird being shaved by someone else! We finished the day at an Italian restaurant where a group of guys were having some kind of backgammon league.

We had booked something called Jungle Flight for the next day, which is just like Go Ape in England! It took us ages to get through the jungle and mountain roads to where it was based but the views on the way made it nicer! We kitted up in some embarrassing gear, including some kind of hair net and set off! Imogen hated the day and was scared of everything, but I definitely enjoyed it lots! The scariest part was a 40m free fall (they called it abseiling) while it was pouring down with rain! We finished with a nice free lunch and free t shirts! Not bad! When we got back to the hotel Imogen decided she needed a manicure and pedicure to cope with the day's trauma but soon regretted it because of the immense pain caused to her by them cutting really deep into her nails! They didn't even apply her nail varnish at all well!

We hadn't seen much of Chiang Mai itself by this point and were so far disappointed so we set out to find the nice bits. During out random walking we found 4 temples, one apparently with aggressive dogs according to a local man! We did find an amazing coffee shop that had recently opened and really reminded us of Workhouse. For lunch we went to a health food cafe (Imogen's idea) where I had a tea made from mushrooms that tasted exactly like cornish cider! I liked it but Imogen hated it. Imogen had carrot, apple and beetroot juice which tasted just like potatoes.

Our train back to Bangkok was next so we packed in the morning and checked out. We went to the amazing coffee shop twice during the day, we definitely wished we found it sooner! We decided not to make the same mistake twice with eating food on Thai trains so got a takeaway pizza ready for our journey! During the night Imogen had cockroaches on her bed and I had a light shining in my face so we both struggled to sleep!

Cambodia

We got up nice and early and met our tuk tuk guy to get to the border. We drove a little way and were dropped off at a "visa office". The guy who met us insisted that we were at the official immigration department, even though we were in a shabby office, then tried to take our passports. Handily, we're not thick and so refused. He then told us that the visa would cost 1200 Baht, when we knew full well it was $20 - we walked out as he was telling us the $20 was for a 3 day visa (which doesn't even exist!) and went to the real border.

We got through immigration smoothly, I even charmed my way out of the bribe the immigration guy tried to make us pay! We got the free bus to Poi Pet then shared a taxi to Siem Riep with a weird guy who was convinced everyone was scamming him.

We were taken to a hotel which seemed nice enough, and I managed to barter our room to 250 Baht/night - bargain!

We hired a driver to drive us around for the next 3 days and spent the evening wandering.

Cambodia was the first place where I got culture shock. Even Siem Riep, an important city, was squalid - it was easily the most poverty-stricken place we've been.

We got up bright and early the next day ready to meet our driver. We drove for about 20 minutes and then got our first sight of Angkor Wat. There is a long walkway leading to the main entrance, and the temple itself is massive; we spent about an hour exploring and we could have stayed much longer.

Next stop was Angkor Thom which was a short drive away. The whole complex is beautiful and perfectly maintained. The areas between the temples have lawns, woods and lakes, and even driving between places was lovely. Angkor Thom is a large area with a few temples and other bits and bobs including the elephant terrace and we spent a long time wandering round and seeing the sights.

The last stop of the day was Ta Prohm, the tomb raider temple. It was just amazing! Definitely my favourite temple, it looked exactly like it had come out of a film about some explorers discovering a lost aztec city.

The next day was John's birthday! I kept telling people but none of the Cambodians cared at all, they didn't even pretend, or say happy birthday!

We spent the day driving around the temples, doing the grand circuit, then spent the evening having a lovely dinner, then drinking at a tiny bar.

The last day we had hired our dude for, we drove through the Cambodian countryside to a temple called something like Banteoy Dewy, which was made of pink stone and very different from the others we'd seen. There was also a lovely nature walk near by, with viewing platforms over the lakes to look at birds.

On the way back, we stopped at the landmine museum, which is run by an ex child soldier who now neutralises land mines and runs a school and home for kids who've been maimed by mines. It was extremely interesting and touching.

We stopped off at a small temple and then took a final look at Angkor Way.

That evening we went to a lovely restaurant and had a delicious sharing plate of curries. At the end of our meal we got into an argument with the staff, who refused to take our $50 note because it was slightly old - even though I'd got it from a cash machine recently! They took it in the end but charged us an extra dollar. We calmed our tempers (ok, my temper) by going to get some ice cream then visiting the night market.

The market was actually rubbish! It was just common souvenir stalls but under one roof. There was a dance act going on, but they were so terrible they were even giggling themselves!

We got up bright and early to get a taxi back to the border, then passed back into Thailand.

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Bangkok, visas and Aranyaprathet

I am doing this post from my phone so expect many mistakes!

Continuing from Hanoi and arriving in Bangkok! We arrived in the early hours so made our way to the departures in Bangkok airport in an effort to not be scammed by taxi drivers. We managed to get a very fast taxi driver for actually a very good price! Obviously by this point we are becoming decent at this travelling thing...

When we arrive at Khao San it was still very busy and bustling despite being about 3 am! We found a decent room and went straight to bed!

We got up quite early (for us) and decided to try and see Harry Potter! We went to Siam Paragon, which is basically a very expensive mall with a lot of high end brands in it! Only window shopping happened for us here! We saw HP that evening at an Imax in the best seats available and loved it!

The start of the day we went to apply for our visas for India. We researched it would take 5 days to process so we had to go in Monday and pick up Friday, a bit inconvenient because we didn't really want to be in Bangkok too long! Spent a lot of the day uploading lots of photos (eventually the staff here would actually recognise us here). The evening somehow ended up with Imogen drinking 3 buckets (very very very etc strong cocktail) and I had beer and sips of the buckets. We ended up absolutely smashed within an hour so went back to the hotel early and ended up pretty poorly! The next day not much happened thanks to the wonders of hangovers.

The next day we adventured out a bit and found the taxi boat pier and did a small sight seeing tour round Bangkok. Our first stop was the Grand Palace, where outside a scammer told us we wouldn't be allowed in because Imogen had flip flops on and it was closed anyway. He did this in front of a sign saying "Beware of wily strangers"! The palace was stunning and Imogen took loads of pictures! The next stop was the Reclining Buddha, which was way bigger than we thought it would be but still amazing. Last stop was Wat Arun, which was beautiful but came with loads of stairs to climb! For lunch on this day we had a small bowl of fried quails' eggs from a street vendor which were actually really nice and perfectly cooked! At the end of the long day we got an hour long foot massage with a free (very painful) back, neck and shoulder massage.

The next day we planned to go to Ayuthaya. I had an amazing plan to save us money which involved taking a taxi boat to the metro and then the metro to the underground to the train station. This ended up taking absolutely ages and costing double what a taxi would anyway! Oops!

Once we arrived in Ayuthaya, we had food tyhen rented some bikes to go around and see the temples and things. We actually managed to sort of find our way around to the main temples despite the very scary traffic!

The next day was the day we picked up our visas for India. We started the day with a trip to MBK to buy some bags on behalf of Mad. Imogen did her best ever bit of haggling to get the price down from 9000THB to 4500THB! It took a while but very impressive! We went to the embassy to pick up our visas, Imogen's was ready when we were first called up but my passport hadn't arrived back yet so we had to wait an hour or so for mine to arrive.

The next day we got a 5 hour long 3rd class train to Aranyaprathet and arrived to an army of tuk tuk drivers! We got out first ever tuk tuk to a hotel and got an early night ready for the border crossing into Cambodia the next day!

Hue

The main memory from Hue for me was the heat. For the 4 or so days we were there it was around 40C every day.

On our first day in Hue after showering and stuff, we went out for dinner but it was dark so we had no idea where anything was. On the way to finding somewhere to eat, we walked past a really creepy looking fairground that probably only looked creepy because of it being night! We ended up finding a place to eat and thanks to language barriers ended up eating rice, vegetables and tofu. It was actually really nice and also really cheap because we only managed to order 1 dish!

The next day we decided to turn the other way out of the hotel, which ended up way more successful because we found actual stuff! We went for a walk along the river, got about 200m and decided it was too hot so we hung out in a cafe for most of the day!

PS Sorry about the ordering of the last 2 posts, I pressed publish on this way before Imogen did on her Hanoi post so don't know what happened there!


The day after, we found a small bakery that runs a school to teach children on the streets to bake, where they then have a skill to gain work. So we did our bit for charity and had some croissants! Next, we went to buy train tickets but the train we wanted was full so we booked tickets for a 2am departure... The rest of the day was spent on the other side of the river where we had lunch and went to the market! Finished the day on the riverside where all the tourist boats park up with coffee and ice cream!

The next day we did a boat tour down the perfume river. The first stop was a nice historical house/garden that we can't identify from our guide books! The next stop was the Thien Mu Pagoda, which is the oldest pagoda in Vietnam! This is also the monastery that the monk who burned himself in protest of the American war came from. We stopped at another temple but were told it was expensive and boring so we sat by the river for a bit! We had lunch on the boat and then stopped at the first of the tombs we would see, which we think was Minh Mang's. During this tomb visit, we took a picture of a dog, which then growled and went for us! A bit later in the same tomb, we looked through an archway towards the river and another dog was there which also came for us! These encounters made us temporarily scared of dogs until just recently! We had an option to see the second tomb but decided against it and then got overcharged for ice creams just outside the tomb instead! The final tomb we think was Tu Duc's. We originally thought this stop was a cafe because we were ushered in by the staff, but then the tour guide came running over telling us that we were at the tomb! While in the tomb, we took it a bit too easy and realised with 10 minutes there was still loads to see so we had to power around to see everything!

For dinner that day we went to an amazing curry place and then for dessert to the bakery again (for charity).

Next day was relaxed at the hotel, Imogen was poorly!

On the next day, we went to the citadel but on the way because it was too hot we stopped at a riverside cafe for water. We ordered what we thought was just normal mineral water but ended up with sweet fizzy water! The water wasn't too bad, but not what we wanted! This was the day of the train so in the evening we hung out at a cafe until it closed at 10:30 then headed to the train station for a very long wait for our train which was only slightly late!

Hue to Hanoi and Hanoi

We quickly found our carriage, our berth mates were already on, a lady on the bottom bunk and a man with his daughter on the top. The man ignored us, but the lady was really nice and helped us work out what we were doing. Neither of us understood the other, but we got round that by chatting anyway and gesticulating wildly.

We settled in to sleep, then were woken up by an extremely loud announcement about the train arriving at a station. We went back to sleep, then woke up again at about 5 or 6. We stayed in bed and snoozed for the rest of the journey (although I kept waking up to find various people were sat at the foot of my bed, which was bizarre!). The beds were really comfy and we both slept really soundly.

As we came out of the station, I was caught behind a ticket dispute, so John ended up ahead of me. The tuk tuk and taxi drivers were very aggressive as I came to the front, they even surrounded me until John noticed I wasn't with him and came back to grab me.

We started off walking to a guest house, but then realised we couldn't be bothered, so we hailed a taxi. We didn't like the one that was recommended, but there was a nicer one down the road so we booked ourselves into that, and booked a cruise through Ha Long Bay while we were checking in.

We spent the next couple of days exploring - we went to the pagoda in the centre of the lake, found a cafe that sold brain and found the nearest post office.

The Ha Long Bay cruise was incredible. It was really poorly organised, which meant lots of waiting around, but the scenery and people more than made up for it. We visited three different caves, one of which was really oddly lit in neon lights and another was just odd in its layout - the path through it took you around the edge, through narrow holes in rocks, under a stage....

We also saw a floating village, which had a school, shops and a bank! Once we reached the place we were stopping for the night we jumped off and had a swim. I just about got the courage up to jump off the lowest floor, but completely chickened out of going off the middle floor. John started off jumping off the roof, to the consternation of all the other guys, who were apparently planning to work their way up, but now couldn't without losing face! We stayed up chatting to everyone, then pottered off to bed, where it was boiling hot!

We woke up to see the sunrise at 5:30, but it was too misty and rainy so we went back to sleep. We were woken up at about 7:30, then we went back to the floating village to do some kayaking in the pools and caves around the village. There was a really narrow split in some rocks, and we decided to try to squeeze through it - was approached really fast, but then I realised close up that we didn't have a chance of making it through with our oars! I braked and we veered off a bit, but then we approached at a more steady pace and just about made it through!

We went back to the boat for lunch, then headed back to Hanoi.

On of our last days, we decided to do some mammoth sight-seeing to feel cultured and work off some of the food and alcohol we'd been eating! We planned out a route through the citadel and to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. When we were half way through the citadel, we realised that it's actually still in use as a military site! There were a load of guys with guns, and signs forbidding photographs. There were signs saying that access to some areas was strictly prohibited, but the arrows to the areas pointed both to where we wanted to go and where we'd just come from. We eventually made it put without being shot, and managed to find the mausoleum, which was very sombre and impressive. We weren't able to get inside, as the tours for the day had finished, so we went to see the museum, the one pillar pagoda and attempted to find Ho Chi Minh's stilt house. It was raining really heavily and we got soaked, so we got a taxi back to the hotel.

The next day we decided to carry on the sightseeing and visited the Temple of Literature, which was smaller than we'd anticipated, but very lovely. Across the road was a park with a lake, so we went for a walk.

We spent our last day visiting all our favourite places and hoping our taxi would turn up on time - which it did! It was actually early, so we breezed through all the airport queues. We had gone with Quatar Airways because it was cheapest and it was lovely, very luxurious, and the journey went really quickly because I was watching telly!

Hoi An

Hoi An is stunning, probably my favourite town we've been to. It's antiquey and has loads of narrow cobbled streets, with little street front restaurants and bars, and a lovely river. We spent about 4/5 days there, and I could have stayed there for much longer!

We went to the tailor for 3 more fittings over the next three days - at the first one I made them adjust everything, but the next two were better! We took all our clothes home on the day before we left, then we went out and bought a giant duffle bag to carry them around in!

We spent a lot of time in the hotel's pool, which was usually deserted, and at bars and restaurants along the river side. We also did a lot of shopping, John bought five ties to go with his new suit, and we bought some souvenirs - I think we were quite restrained though!

We decided to treat ourselves to a nice meal at one of the restaurants recommended in our guidebook - the Mango Room. They gave us free home made crisps and salsa as we browsed the menu, then after we ordered our main courses they brought us free starters too! We had some kind of vegetable tempura to start, which was delicious, then I had tofu with a garlicky sauce and John had Sea Bass.

Since the restaurant was quite expensive, we went to our favourite cafe at the riverside afterwards and had a bottle of local wine, which was nice and cheap! The same cafe had draught beer for about 8p a glass, which John took full advantage of.

We got a bus to Hue (as recommeded by the kid we met at Sea Lake), which was cramped and hot, but only took a couple of hours. John is writing about Hue right now, eventually we will be caught up!!

Bike trip day five - last day!

I was so sad that it was our last day! This last portion of the journey was short but incredibly beautiful. We saw a portion of the original Ho Chi Minh Trail and a beautiful waterfall.

We stopped at a very traditional village, where the elders didn't even speak modern Vietnamese. There was a little girl who loved me and kept following me round smiling! We also went to a bigger pineapple farm and ate some amazing fresh pineapple with salt, as the locals eat it. We also tried some jackfruit, which is basically a big durian, but it was so vile I couldn't even eat it out of politeness!

Our next stop was a beautiful temple, where we got to see some of the service, which was lovely. We also stopped at a house where a lady was making rice paper, she was so mechanical it was hypnotic!

Our final stop was a cafe which had recently been a wedding and still had all the decorations up! From there it was a short ride to Hoi An. The guys found us a lovely cheap hotel with a swimming pool and then took us to the best tailor in town.We spent ages choosing designs and fabricsm then went to a cafe to say goodbye to Tan and Anh. It was really horrible after five days of being with them almost non-stop.

We spent the evening exploring Hoi An, which is amazing!

Bike trip day four - Kon Tum City to Somewhere

I'll edit the title once I've worked out where we actually stayed the night!

It started raining soon after we set off, so we sheltered under a large hut, and John and I wandered off and found a monument while Tan and Anh dug in their bags to get their rain gear out. They had thoughtfully brought extra for us - John had a full on rain suit with trousers and I got a long rain coat.

We reached the start of the Ho Chi Minh trail, took some pictures then set off down it! The scenery today was absolutely amazing.

We stopped to buy some sweets, then went to see some village kids and taught them to take sweeties from strangers. We saw an enormously rickety bridge that a couple were brave enough to cross on motorbike!

We saw Scorpion Waterfall, which was just stunning, then stopped at a family's house and watched a man making rat traps to catch food in the jungle. The kids were very cheeky and kept asking for more sweets!

The hotel was beautiful and we even had a balcony! We had a goodbye dinner with Anh and Tan for our last night then went to bed.

Bike trip day three - Daklak to Kon Tum City

This day was a bit of a killer,we had to travel about 300km and were knackered by the end of it! There was some stunning scenery though, and we still made a few stops. Our first was a beautiful view where Tan pointed out that all the greenery we could see were coffee trees! We also spotted some Vietnamese fire engines, one of which was army camouflage!

Next stop was a local person's house where they made and dried rice noodles. There was a giant machine that the ladies mashed the paste into, then it dropped out the bottom, was cut and then set out to dry in the sun. Tam kept making us eat it even though it was really dry and bitty.

Next we stopped at a pepper plantation, and again Tan made us eat some! They were very, very hot! We also saw a cashew tree, which was even more bizarre than the pineapple! Cashews grow pocking out the bottom of a peach-like fruit, which wasn't how I imagined them at all. We also discovered mimosa, and spent the rest of the trip spotting it and poking it endlessly! We popped down the road to a household drying coffee beans outside their house, and Tan pulled up some peanuts for us.

Next stop was an endless rubber plantation, where some really friendly ladies let us take pictures with their (very heavy) buckets of sap. Then we stopped at Sea Lake, where we met a guy eager to practice his English who advised us to visit his hometown, Hue.

We eventually arrived at the hotel with very sore bums, and after a failed attempt to find the local market, we went to bed.

Bike trip day two - Lak Lake to Daklak

We met Anh and Tan for breakfast at the restaurant, then we set off for a nearby village. Tan and Anh showed us the traditional village houses, and some new ones which had been recently been built. We saw elephants, pigs, dogs and chickens around the village, and some very sweet children who were delighted when we took a picture of them and showed them. One of the longhouses had a massive duck pen underneath, and when we went over to see them the ducks all ran to us, obviously expecting to be fed!

We had a rest stop at a stunning dam, where we took some pictures and went for a walk to stretch our legs, then we went to a python farm. They had a giant python and a baby, and some scorpions and other stuff. There were also two really cute children who probably got more attention from us than the snakes! We also saw a pineapple farm, which was bizarre - I did not realise pineapples grew like that!

We drove a bit longer, then Anh pointed out a village five aside football match, so we stopped to watch for a bit. We sat on the floor near the road and immediately had a little crowd of about 7 kids sneaking glances. The were giggling and watching us, then one of them came and squatted about a metre away from his friends, towards us. The rest of his friends quickly ran over and joined him, still sneaking glances. Eventually, metre by metre, the whole crowd ended up next to us, pretty much openly staring! At half time, the crowd grew to about 20-30 kids, and some nearby older teens who were too cool to look interested. It was really awkward because we couldn't really communicate so we were pretty much watching them staring at us! As some of the crowd dispersed when the match resumed we got our camera out and showed the kids how to use it, which resulted in some good pictures of the match and some of the ground!

We went to what I think is the biggest waterfall in Vietnam, which was stunning! We wandered around the little rocky coves, which was a bit scary, and took lots of photos.

We arrived at our hotel early, at about 4 ro 4:30, then went for a wander around the town. We stopped at a coffee shop where nobody spoke English and attempted to order coffee from the menu - which we got! Hooray!

We went back to the hotel and met Anh an English guy called Evan and a Vietnamese guy whose name I can't remember and decided to have dinner with them. We drank lots of rice wine, and since Anh and Evan seemed to have had a good start on us, they both became very impassioned with various opposing viewpoints! At one point Evan laughingly called me crazy for being veggie and Anh jumped to my defence and had a go! Evan was smashed and kept bringing up the least neutral dinner conversation topics such as the American War and how westerners see Vietnam as dirty! It was a completely bewildering evening, but a lot of fun.

Vietnam part 3 - Bike trip Day 1 - Nha Trang to Lak Lake

After our drivers turned up, we got on some motorbikes for only the 3rd time ever to start a 5 day 4 night adventure!

The initial stop was to a post box to let Imogen go post some letters... Very exciting and bums not too sore yet!

First actual stop for the day was to look over a nice view where a resort was being built. Apparently the building of the resort was moving very slowly because the manager was stealing money from the funds! Near the resort, we also saw Turtle Island which slightly resembled a turtle (more than Koh Tao did at least!).

Next stop was to get petrol but it was a petrol station right next to a local fishing port! We saw people rowing along it what looked like should have been big baskets, a strange looking dead fish and people just generally doing their day to day work! One lady was particularly efficient at sorting through shellfish caught.

We then went to a pagoda, a Buddhist temple. This was really gorgeous and peaceful with some faint music playing from somewhere. It was completely deserted except a small girl who was waving at us when she saw us!

Next we saw some people making bricks. They used a really simple machine to pour in ingredients and out comes a continuous flow of soft brick! This gets cut and then set out in the sun to dry then in a furnace to bake.

Then we stopped at a very small ethnic minority village. The house was long and low and is where every member of the family stays.There was a very cute and shy child in one of the windows who wanted to come see us but was a bit too shy! A family on the other side of the road all came out and shouted their hellos at us!

Then we traveled up into the mountains. The views were absolutely stunning and the roads were really fun! We stopped at the workshop of a man who made really cool looking furniture out of really old wood. He had a couple of dogs and monkeys, we fed the monkeys a banana each!

We next stopped at a coffee plantation, which we were both obviously very excited about seeing! The beans were not how expected them to be at all! After this during our drive we drove through a village where children actually ran out of their houses to come and see us and say hello! It was just like you see on TV and so nice.

Next, we stopped somewhere they were taking the skin off green beans. The people that worked here were very nice and we got a picture with them (which will eventually be uploaded) where we got asked to crouch so they didn't look so short!

The last thing we saw before our hotel for the night were some large machines pumping sand out from the river bed. This gets used to make cement! During the final leg of the day we also some farmers who had managed to get their tractor stuck in the rice paddy!

After the continuation of more amazing scenery we arrived at our hotel. We had a room with a veranda that led straight out onto Lak Lake, it was beautiful! While we were sitting out on our veranda, Imogen left her handbag on the floor and when she picked it up got bitten. She then realised her bag was covered everywhere with ants! Just before our dinner we noticed our room was actually covered in insects, good thing we had mosquito nets!

Bum soreness level: Quite sore

Vietnam Part 2 - Nha Trang

As John said in his last post, we arrived into Nha Trang at about lunchtime, and we got a taxi and asked the driver to take us to a cheap hotel. We ended up at a place called happy house, which was nice and cheap but had the most miserable, grumpy receptionist ever!

We went out to get some food, since it was about 4 by this point and we hadn't eaten all day because we couldn't work out the food ordering system on the train! Outside the restaurant, we came across some guys offering to take us on a bike trip and a young boy selling books, but we shooed them away until after we'd eaten. The restaurant was actually incredible, it had set meals with amazing food which were really cheap!

After we'd eaten, we let the boy convince us to buy 2 books (the last 2 in the Millennium trilogy and Catch 22) and chatted to the bike guys. They were really friendly and had a book full of reviews from people who they had taken on trips. We decided to go and get coffee with them, and we had our first pillion-riding experience, which in the heavy Nha Trang traffic was TERRIFYING! I was completely convinced that I would just slip off the back and John admitted afterwards that he had noticed himself squeezing his driver with his thighs going round corners!


I don't think John mentioned in his post, but the Vietnamese love coffee. They roast their beans with margarine and sugar, then grind it quite coarse and use an odd little contraption ( right) to make really strong drip coffee, which they drink with sugar and ice, and the milk that's used for white coffee is condensed milk, but you can get fresh in some places.

So, we ordered some coffee and had a look through all the reviews from the bikers' customers and we were definitely tempted! We had a set budget for all expenses per day, so we decided that if we could get the price down to that, we would take a trip to Ao Nang, which was our next planned stop. In the end, the cost was a bit over budget, but we decided to just go for it anyway! We did manage to haggle a good chunk off it, which I was very proud of.

We found out that the drivers were called Anh and Tan, and we arranged to meet them two days later to set off on a five day trip. We put down a deposit and they took us back to our hotel.

The next day, we went to the nearby mineral mud baths, which were soooo relaxing. We did the cheapest option, which included a hot mineral shower, a private mud bath, another shower and some hydrotherapy, then a (very!) hot mineral bath. There was also a public mineral swimming pool and waterfall, but they were heated so swimming was just exhausting! It was difficult to get pictures because of the mud, but I got a couple of John!

John was really ill the day after that, so we had a very quiet day walking on the beach, reading and not doing much. We decided that we should buy an SD card for the bike trip, so we went for a wander to hunt down a shopping centre John had seen. We did find it, but it was tiny and rubbish! A really nice, helpful sales lady gave us some directions in hand signals and we managed to eventually find somewhere to buy one, although I think this was more luck than anything else!

When we mentioned the bike trip to the miserable receptionist and she did a really concerned face, so I spent the evening convinced they were con artists who would either steal our money and never be seen again, or drive us to a secluded spot, then rob us. I actually couldn't sleep because I was so worried!

We woke up bright and early for the start of our trip, hoping that Anh and Tan would show up.... which they did!! It turned out the horrible receptionist was just put out that we hadn't booked through the hotel and therefore given them their commission!

Bike trip post to come!

Vietnam Part 1 - Saigon

Hello again! Our lack of anything for the last month can be described very easily! We did originally plan only a couple of weeks in Vietnam, but loved it and stayed for a month. Then this combined with facebook being banned and blogs sometimes carefully monitored we though it would be best to just leave it! The fact that my flickr is linked to my facebook account to log in does mean we have about 5GBs of photos to upload, but once they are done a lot of them are very nice!

Anyway, on to Saigon...

From the airport we ended up in an extremely overpriced taxi, with a driver who was jittery, speeding and constantly honking (we later realised the honking is pretty normal for Vietnam). We made our way into the city, got a nice hotel and booked a few small trips. The roads of Saigon are incredibly scary. Everyone drives motorbikes, there are very few cars, and the roads are almost constantly busy. The only way to get across some roads is to just walk and have the bikes make their way around you (while Imogen screams a bit).

Our first day involved a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels. These were tunnels the Viet Cong guerrillas hid, fought and lived for over 20 years. We saw a lot of the traps used by the Viet Cong which all looked incredibly painful! We eventually got to go into the tunnels themselves, which even though had been widened for us fat westerners, were very tight, stuffy, dirty and hot! We had a choice to go quite far but left at the first exit because it was very unpleasant. The fact people lived in these tunnels for so long is pretty shocking once you go inside.

Cyclo - like the one we took

The evening of our first day in Saigon was much nicer! The evening started with a trip to the water puppet theatre, which was really cool even though we had no idea what was going on! I even thought the dogs were dragons! We the took a cyclo ride (see picture on right!) across Saigon, which was one of the scariest things ever. Especially when the driver is going head-on into traffic at night. The cyclo was taking us to a dinner on a river cruise, which was really lovely and the first time we had wine on our whole trip! The evening on the boat ended with Imogen and some others playing music together at the front of the boat. Imogen's job was playing some kind of cups that were played like castonets!

The next day was a day trip to see around the city. The stops were reunification palace, war remnants museum, a chinese pagoda, chinatown, a market and a laquerware factory. The best of these was definitely the war remnants museum, which we didn't have enough time out so we revisited it the next day! This evening was spent at a rooftop bar where they barbecue food in front of you on the table itself. Was pretty cool and we got pretty drunk!

We went back to the War Remnants museum, which was a really interesting place to visit but very harrowing. This paragraph from Wikipedia describes everything pretty well.
One building reproduces the "tiger cages" in which the South Vietnamese government housed political prisoners. Other exhibits include graphic photographs, accompanied by short copy in English, Vietnamese and Japanese, covering the effects of Agent Orange and other chemical defoliant sprays, the use of napalm and phosphorus bombs, and atrocities such as the My Lai massacre. Curiosities include a guillotine used by the French and the South Vietnamese to execute prisoners, last in 1960, and three jars of preserved human fetuses deformed by exposure to dioxin.

We got our train to Nha Trang very early the next morning. During the journey, I didn't remember when we were supposed to arrive (1pm) and woke Imogen up an hour into the journey at the first stop worried! During the journey I ended up with an old lady behind me with gross feet putting her feet on my chair and Imogen had a man constantly hocking phlegm... Other than these the journey was pretty pleasant!

Next post the beach town of Nha Trang...

Important Update!

Hi guys,

We're safely in Vietnam, and I love it here!

Just to let you know, we won't have access to Facebook or Flickr while we're here in Vietnam, and we'll be writing the blog less just to be on the cautious side! We'll be here up to three weeks, maybe less, and the best way to contact us is our phones, on the comments here or emails (but I'm bad at checking them!)

We'll get up-to-date once we're in Cambodia or Laos (or, at worst back in Thailand!)

Penang, Ipoh and back to KL

Because we only had 10 days in Malaysia we decided to focus on the North-West peninsular, namely Penang for the dragonboat races, KL of course and Ipoh for the Cameron highlands. Lots to fit in to this post!

We headed out of the internet cafe at about 6, after John wrote the last post. We wandered around Georgetown waiting for a cafe to open and watching the sunrise until we managed to get some coffee and breakfast at a little cafe.

Since the purpose for our visit to Penang was mostly the races, we decided to try to find somewhere to stay closer to that area. We hopped on a bus that headed up to the dam and watched the amazing scenery. After quite a while, lots of people got off the bus at one particular stop and the bus driver was shouting something in Malaysian. Assuming this was the last stop (which ours was), we hopped off. We pretty quickly realised it wasn't our stop! We tootled off to get a taxi the rest of the way, and challenged the driver to find us some nice cheap accommodation in the village. It was handy we did actually, because the area was a small village and we'd never have been able to find the homestay we did without him! The house we stayed in was a long bungalow with quite a few others staying (most of them were a bit weird!) We got a shabby room with a four-post bed for the bargain price of RN35 a night and had the opportunity to read some government pamphlets on why most foods are highly dangerous.

We spent the day at the races, which were smaller than we expected but still amazing! We got there in time for the opening ceremony, part of which was even in English. There was one poor team who were just miles behind every race, and the Australian Navy team wasn't the best either!!

While exploring the village, we saw a wedding taking place! Obviously we didn't go inside, but there was a girl singing, people arriving decked out in their finest and lots of banners. The nest day, we walked past the same couple at the head of a street part wedding reception!

We spent our last Penang day in Georgetown, seeing the sights. My favourite was Fort Cornwallis, which is one of the forts that we used when we colonised Malaysia! We happened to run into the taxi driver around the town, which was a bit uncanny! He approved of what we'd done on out visit because we'd experienced the village and town life of Penang, which the man was extremely fond of.

Next, we got back on the train to Ipoh to head to the Cameron highlands. Ipoh had some stunning architecture and was very heavily chinese influenced, with many of the public signs and shopfronts in Mandarin rather than Malaysian. We got a cheap room with aircon and a private shower (although there were some ladies of ill repute on our street).

We got the bus to Cameron Highlands and were initially really disappointed. The pictures of it in the guidebook were of rolling hills, but when we pulled in it looked like any other town! Since the guidebook mentioned them, we stopped for a cream tea, which was decidedly odd. The scones were cinnamony and crumbly, but for reasons unknown, the baker had decided to put jelly sweets in them?!? And I don't even want to think about what was in the cream!

We decided to make the best of it and hired a taxi for a couple of hours to take us to the main tea plantation. When we got there it was amazing! Exactly how we expected Cameron to be! We took a tour around the factory, walked through the plantation and drank some special tea.

We then got the train back to KL ready for our flight! We stayed in the same hotel with our nice man and today went to see the Batu Cave, which was incredible. Lots of steps though. We're flying out tomorrow at 3 to Vietnam, so next post will hopefully be from there!

Sorry if this post seems rushed, it's actually taken 2 hours but it's just lots to fit in!!

Malaysia so far, mainly Kuala Lumpur and a tiny bit of Penang

After the excitement of missing our originally booked plane to Malaysia, we had the apparent struggle of getting out of the airport. While leaving there were stands trying to get us to buy coach tickets but we had no Malaysian money, so we found an ATM and got out the amount we would normally get at once in Thailand, which was RM1250. This came out of the machine the form of 24 RM50 notes and 5 RM10 notes, I don't think my wallet will ever be as full as it was at this point.

We eventually found where coaches to the centre of Kuala Lumpur were, this didn't cost much at all and took us to the transport hub of KL, KL Sentral. In our travel guide there was a hotel nearby which we were interested in going to, so we decided to try and walk to it. After walking for at least 2 hours pretty much in circles around KL Sentral, we realised it is impossible to escape and got a taxi. We had no idea where we wanted a taxi to, so we just took it to the shopping district of KL Bukit Bintang.

Next we very quickly found a decent sized and nice hotel right in the centre - the person running it was very friendly and very helpful! We even got free breakfast!

Our first day in KL was a bit of exploring the local area, we found some nice street food which was a very good way of introducing us to Malaysian cuisine! Later, we went to the BB Plaza which at first seemed like quite a small row of shops underground but once we went in (and lost a little bit) we saw it was loads of shops ranging from 3rd basement level to 6th floor!

Our second day in KL we became mega tourists. At our hotel we bought tickets for a bus tour which you can jump on and off whenever you like to go see the sites. We did manage to see lots of nice buildings on the bus, but we mainly wanted to go see the large park where there were lots of things to do! The first thing we did in the park was go to the butterfly gardens, an area with lots of butterflies obviously! After seeing all the butterflies, there were some other insects in boxes some of which were very scary looking!

After the butterflies, we went for a bit of lunch at the restaurant attached to our next destination - the KL Bird Park. We ate in the outside area, where you can see into the park itself and when I had finished a very cheeky bird came and ate my leftover rice! the bird park itself was really good, we saw loads! Roaming free were lots of peafowl, ibis and others I don't know the name of! We were walking around here for ages and ended up incredibly tired, probably due to our lack of fitness.

After this, we went to the planetarium, which was the cheapest attraction at only RM1 (20p)! This was pretty fun, mainly aimed at children but we didn't care! Lots of things to play with and do, definitely the best value for money thing we did in the park. After a short walk we were back on the bus and decided to get off next to a place on the map for "authentic malay food" - sounds good to us! We got off, went for a wonder and ended up coming across a pretty big night market, where we were the only tourists as far as I could tell.

After we ate, we thought we might just be in time for the (stupidly early - 8:30 pm) last bus to get back to our hotel. We waited about 40 minutes and gave up and just got a taxi...

That was it for KL! We decided to go to Penang to come and see some dragon boat racing so we headed back to KL Sentral to see if any tickets were available today, which they were but only in first class - still only 15 pound a ticket though!

The train was originally meant to leave at about 3 and arrive at 9 pm - this would have left us enough time to get the very cheap ferry over and find somewhere to stay. But then we were told the train was delayed until 4, that was fine - we would arrive at 10 and probably miss the ferry but there were other options. We got let on the train at 4 but it didn't leave straight away, there was a problem with the air conditioning so we had to wait another 2 hours and finally left at about 6:15! As if that wasn't enough, as we were nearing the end of our train journey we were told there is a problem with the line and we had to get a bus for the last bit! Once we arrived we shared a taxi with a nice Australian couple and we decided to stay up to save some money - so we are now wasting time in an internet cafe probably saving not so much money! We are planning to move north where the dragon boats are later today after breakfast (with lots of coffee) and sorry if this was all jibberish it is currently 4:20 am here!

Byee!!!!

Ao Nang post edits

I've edited the Ao Nang post because I realised I forgot to finish it! There is lots more there now, including our cookery!

Phuket

Did they make it to Malaysia?
Was the van a rickety 4x4? Find out here!

I'll break the tension now - the van was a mini bus! It was actually two, since they decided to make an extended stop to wait for a new van and to grill us about where we were going so they could try and sell us stuff. The journey was interesting - there were no seatbelts and the driver wasn't afraid to go at breakneck speed, even though his van made concerning creaking sounds going round corners. John and I were also in the front with the driver because they wanted to fit as many people as possible in! Funniest moment was when the driver looped his seatbelt round the hand break to go past the police, then removed it again afterwards, laughing.

We arrived exhausted at Phuket Town, and was immediately accosted by travel agents, who offered us a room for 500B. It was a shared bathroom, but good enough for one night (or so we thought!). We also booked an overpriced early morning taxi.

The room itself was basically a white box, with no outside windows (only one out to the hall) and a simple bed and wardrobe. It looked like what I imagine a psychiatric hospital would look like, and John thought it looked like a prison (which was quite apt as we later discovered). We actually had the bathroom to ourselves, but it was dank and down a dark hallway and I was actually so scared of it that I made John come with me in the night!

I wasn't sure if we needed passport photos to get into Malaysia, so on the advice of the hotel staff we popped over to the Tesco Lotus to get some done. I say popped over, but it was actually across a 10 lane busy road, and crossings don't exist in Thailand. There was a set of traffic lights, but not for all of the lanes. After much discussion of tactics and scouting of the traffic patterns, we eventually made it across unharmed, although I was close to being hit by a motorcyclist weaving through the lanes. To add insult to injury, a street dog trotted across quite happily just after we did.

The Tesco Lotus was enormous, and we had a good old look around while we checked on the photo requirements. It turned out we didn't need pictures, so we went for a walk to explore the area. We eventually realised that we were not, in fact, in Phuket Town. Or really very near it. We hopped in a taxi and went to the actual Phuket Town to find some food, then we got a nice early night ready for our early morning taxi.

I slept really badly because of the creepy room and the deserted corridor to the bathroom - I kept having nightmares! We woke up nice and early, had a random breakfast of food we'd bought the previous day at Tesco, checked our bags and headed downstairs to the back entrance where we were meeting our taxi. When we got down, we found that the back entrance was locked. as was the front entrance. As were all the windows. We were a few minutes early anyway, so we decided to wait for a bit. While we were doing that we checked the tickets and realised we had got the time wrong, the plane was actually 45 minutes earlier than we thought it was. Mildly concerning, but we'd left plenty of time so no worries. Since we were waiting anyway we decided to check in online to save time once we arrived. Oddly, the check in for our plane said it had closed at 7:30 - but it was only 5:50. Then I noticed the date on the check in, which happened to be a week previous. Oops! No idea how we did that!

There was still no taxi and our meeting time had passed so I rang the emergency number to say that we'd been locked in. The taxi driver came and let us out, but really! What if there had been a fire?!?

We easily managed to buy new tickets on the same aeroplane as we were originally scheduled to catch and we arrived in Malaysia at 10:30 local time safe and sound!

John is going to write a post about Malaysia so far and upload some pictures at a later date.

Ao Nang

Here's a quick and dirty post while we wait for our van to Phuket! We're a bit nervous about this "van" actually, because we have a feeling it will be the back of a 4x4, clinging on for dear life for 3 hours.

We'll, the last blog post was from Rai Lay, a couple of days before we left. The day after that, we went on a hunt for the viewpoint to the south of the beach. We didn't find it, but we did discover another gorgeous beach. This one was small and enclosed by the cliffs, with lots of climbers (Rai Lay is a climbing mecca, but John wussed out and I decided to retain my dignity). We sat watching the climbers and eating snacks for a couple of hours, then went on the hunt for a boat to Ao Nang, where we had seen a cookery school advertised. We were told that we would have to walk to Rai Lay West beach and try to get a longboat across.

We walked over to the West beach the next morning, and easily found a boat. The driver (captain?) said that we could wait for more people to arrive or pay for the whole boat with the two people who were already waiting. He insisted that nobody was travelling to Ao Nang that day, and we should probably just pay the extra. Handily, we had all the time in the world to wait! Six more people turned up well within half an hour and off we went on a bumpy sea!

We arrived in Ao Nang and went on the hunt for accommodation, but it wasn't as easy as the other places we'd been, and it was hot, so we went to a travel agent to see what was available. She suggested a near-by hotel which charged 400 ฿ a night. The room is quite small, but has a window, flushing toilet and hot water.

We've spent most of our time in Ao Nang wandering around exploring and chilling out. We've discovered a strip of street food which is about 40 ฿ a dish (80p) and have been eating there for almost every meal!

Van is due to arrive any minute now, so


To Be Continued....

EDIT

I realised on the train that I never finished this post, just skipped over to Phuket! It is 2:20 here, and we've just arrived in Penang too late to get a room so I anticipate this post may spiral into incoherence.

Anywho, Ao Nang! Our hotel was on a big road perpendicular to the main strip along the beach, so we spent the fist afternoon and evening wandering up and down the strip, looking in shops and being hounded by touts. John wasn't impressed that my method for evading the touts involves saying "we'll come back later!" because they all remembered us when we went past a second time! There was one pizza restaurant where I accidentally used the same evasion script twice (which was saying "Sorry, we've just eaten" while holding my stomach. Yes, I had actions and everything!") The second time I said this, the guy went"You walked past earlier and said you've just eaten, now you're saying you've just eaten!!". I told him we'd come back later. Since the restaurant was in the middle of the main strip, we thought we'd better go on the first night and get it over and done with. We arrived that evening to cheers and clapping from the touts, which was nice. When we left I told them they had to leave us alone after that, which they did. Mostly.

We took a couple of walks up the hill through the local village to the post office to post some mystery packages to unsuspecting people. It was about a 40 minute walk, going past lots of interesting shops (like a big bookshop!!) and a gorgeous mosque. We also both got our hair cut at a salon on the hill, mine was a trim but John got his all cut off! They blow dried my hair into a hilarious Princess Diana-esque bouffant and they combed John's forward onto his forehead with what was either some kind of heavy serum or wet look gel (I got a picture of this!) Lots of people have commented on my hair because it's blonde and curly - I guess it's exotic? All of the dyed sections have been trimmed off my hair now, so I no longer have roots! Hooray! (I know this detail will fascinate everyone.) The bill somehow doubled itself in the time between the owner showing us the price list and us actually paying, but we were too lazy to argue.

On our last day, and really the reason we went to Ao Nang at all, was Ya's cooking school! There were three other people learning with us, two friendly young Canadian guys and a nice Australian lady. As me and John got ready for the cooking we joked about whether Ya was on Gordon Ramsay's series on SE Asia.

We started the course by preparing the ingredients for our curry pastes. There were two steps to this, bang bang and chop chop. We were provided with batons for the bang bang and very sharp knives for the chop chop and got banging and chopping! Next we did Pad Thai and sticky rice with mango - which was my favourite dish. We also made spring rolls, two types of stir fry, two soups, three curries and a raw papaya salad.

It was a busy day but a lot of fun, and we got to eat the food. Well, as much of it as we could (and we took home leftovers!). When we were chatting to Ya, she asked us if we'd heard of Gordon Ramsay, which of course we had! It turns out that she actually HAD been on his show! We were very excited, she was quite bemused because she hadn't even heard of him before she was contacted to do the show. Apparently he was extremely friendly and polite and didn't swear at all. He was feeling homesick apparently, as he'd been away from home for a while at this point. We told her we'd seen the first in the series before we left, which was Cambodia. She was really interested in what they'd cooked because she's originally from East Thailand where the food is similar (they border each other). We told her about the half formed chicks and the cockroaches and she nodded away. Apparently they only eat cockroaches from the trees (some particular species) as they perceive the ones on the floor to be dirty.

That's me all up-to-date as far as the beginning of the Phuket post! Phew!

Rai Lay Bay

Well, we got Rai Lay after about a 90 minute boat trip which, to my surprise, ended with a short long tail boat ride to shore - which meant we were going to have to jump in all the water with all our stuff and trousers on - not amused! (Imogen note: I thought it was fun to wade to shore because I'm not grumpy and I know how to roll my trousers up so they don't immediately flop back down into the sea)

When we arrived and looked around, it was stunning. Rai Lay is an area of Krabi only accessible by boat and it is surrounded by huge limestone cliffs.

We went for a short walk towards most of the accommodation and ended up in a bungalow with 2 double beds for 500 baht a night!

First night was just a bit of exploration around where we had a nice meal in a little cafe type place, where Imogen didn't like what she got so we went to a beach side bar had some drinks and pizza!

Second day here we had a pretty horrible breakfast from our hotel's restaurant, we wandered around for a bit and then decided to go to Tonsai beach, which according to signs looked like it would be nice and easy to get to and nice place to go relax.

On the way to Tonsai we came across our resort's name sake - crystal cave. It cost 40 baht each to go in and it was really cool. It was creepy and you could hear bats on the ceiling. All the rock and stuff inside was really pretty, well worth the tiny amount of money and bit of time spent down there.

We then continued our journey to Tonsai, and came to sign saying it was 800m away and pointed towarded some forest... Being the adventurers we are we of course went for it. Early on the walk we came across what looked like abandoned housing, which in my eyes was the sort of place a mad murderer would hang out waiting for victims like us on our way past. Luckily, it was just some abandoned buildings. Eventually, we ended up on a really steep hill climb for a long time, while Imogen attracted every single mosquito in the close area. The climb involved the use of ropes which had been placed to make it slightly more manageable - eventually we came to some closed resorts, that were closed probably because of it being the off-peak season and then a short walk later ended up on the beach.

The beach itself was beautiful, perfect white sands with glistening water and hardly anyone there. We sat here for a while and had lunch because that walk definitely knocked the energy out of both of us!

We decided on walking back before sunset over getting a boat back, we weren't sure how to get the boat and this would be more fun anyway! The journey back was much quicker but with possibly more mosquitoes constantly chasing Imogen (and me this time, maybe they thought I would be easier with all their buddies trying to get Imogen). After this journey we, mainly Imogen, realised that mosquitoes can bite through fabric despite most people thinking otherwise, including through Imogen's shoe and sock!

The next day something very exciting happened... We had our clothes properly washed! After scrubbing them just ourselves for all this time we thought we splash out and get them cleaned, it cost 210 baht for all our clothes and because of the lack of clothes we decided it would be best to hang out and relax at the swimming pool for the day.

The day after this we didn't do much at all and ended up mainly at the bungalow, where we had some of the worst rain I've ever seen - which isn't so bad when you are chilling on your veranda watching the plants flood.

Today we did plan to go to the viewpoint somewhere south I think, but it is taking absolutely ages for our photos to upload, you had better appreciate every single one of them!!!

Bye bye!!

John

Flickr

Just a quick update - a bigger one is likely to be up soon since it is taking ages to upload loads of photos - The first group of photos uploaded now all have descriptions if you are interested link is here...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/63142467@N03/

Phi Phi

Hi, writing this as my hands and probably my face glisten with sweat.

We have been on Koh Phi Phi for a few days. When we first arrived we are bit disappointed compared to Koh Tao, it is much more cramped, less relaxed and a bit of party island (definitely not our thing!)

After a proper nights sleep from the horrendous journey over and having a proper look around we liked it way more. We ended up in a decent sized room for 500 baht, with an actual flushing toilet!! We did have to drill a bit into the roof to get our mosquito net up but I'm sure no one minded/noticed!

After our original dislike of the island we did end up extending our stay from 2 nights to 4. We booked a half day snorkeling trip and did some wondering around. For lunch we had a massive barbecued fish and rise from a street vendor while sat on rubbish chairs + table and it was really yummy, even though some bits seemed a bit too soft to be the meat of the fish... That evening we walked up to the viewpoint over Phi Phi. It was really high and Imogen's lungs were not having a good time! The view at the end was definitely worth it, it was stunning and you could see so much and a bit of the sunset which ended up obscured by clouds. While we were up at the top the mosquitoes had started gathering for a feast (normally aimed at Imogen) so I started putting some repellent on, I started with my neck then as I went to put some on my arms there was one just about to bite! They never go for me and the one time I find one on me was while I was trying to repel them, not happy!


The next day, which was originally booked to go on our snorkeling trip changed because apparently the boat was broken but we changed our tickets for the day after not really expecting the best. The rest of that day was spent lazing on the beach not doing much at all, which was lovely! That night we ended up with a HUGE cockroach falling onto Imogen's face and scurrying across the room to go chill in the corner. We did already find a cockroach in our bathroom which was a bit smaller, which we forced into the drain on the floor by using the bum gun and showers to guide it. That night was particularly difficult to sleep, with every little noise and tickle of the fan perking us both back up in fear.

We went on our snorkeling/boat trip the next day. Our first stop was monkey island, which was a tiny beach with loads of monkeys where you could get really close (and if were stupid, you could also give them beer to drink!). Monkeys seemed very anxious about all the attention and after we took a couple of photos we stood back to try and encourage as little as possible. We continued our journey around seeing some lovely scenery and eventually stopped somewhere and went for a small kayak journey and then snorkeled a bit. The fish were then drawn to the boat by the people running everything as the through loads of food out to them. We then watched the sunset out at sea and went back to land on a very overcrowded long-tail boat to have a buffet, which was nice but we left shortly after when it began raining a little bit.

I think that's pretty much everything noteworthy from Phi Phi, we are on a boat in 30 mins to Rai Lay beach for probably even more relaxing!

Bye!

End of Koh Tao and journey to Koh Phi Phi

Ｈｅｌｌｏ　ａｇａｉｎ　ｅｖｅｒｙｂｏｄｙ！　Ｉｔ　ｉｓ　ＳＯ　ＨＯＴ　ｔｏｄａｙ！Ｗｅ＇ｖｅ　ｇｏｔ　ａ　ｂｏａｔ　ｔｏ　ｃａｔｃｈ　ｔｏ　Ｒａｉ　Ｌａｙ　ｉｎ　ｈａｌｆ　ａｎ　ｈｏｕｒ，　ｓｏ　ｔｉｍｅ　ｆｏｒ　ａ　ｑｕｉｃｋ　ｕｐｄａｔｅ！

Ｉ　ｌｅｆｔ　ｙｏｕ　ｉｎ　ｔｈｅ　ｌａｓｔ　ｐｏｓｔ　ａｓ　ｗｅ　ｗｅｒｅ　ａｂｏｕｔ　ｔｏ　ｇｏ　ｔｏ　ｓｈａｒｋ　ｂａｙ！　Ｉ＇ｌｌ　ｂｒｅａｋ　ｔｈｅ　ｔｅｎｓｉｏｎ　ｎｏｗ　－ｎｏ　ｓｈａｒｋｓ．

Ｗｅ　ｇｏｔ　ａ　ｔａｘｉ　ｏｖｅｒ　ａｓ　ｉｔ＇ｓ　ａ　ｂｉｔ　ｏｆ　ａ　ｄｉｓｔａｎｃｅ　ｔｏ　ｗａｌｋ　ａｎｄ　ｔｈｅ　ｆｒｉｅｎｄ　ｗｅ　ｗｅｒｅ　ｗｉｔｈ　ｈａｄ　ａｎ　ｅａｒｌｙ　ａｆｔｅｒｎｏｏｎ　ｂｏａｔ　ｔｏ　ｃａｔｃｈ．　Ｔｈｅｒｅ　ａｒｅｎ＇ｔ　ｒｅａｌｌｙ　ｒｏａｄｓ　ｉｎ　Ｋｏｈ　Ｔａｏ，　ｓｏ　ｗｅ　ｗｅｒｅ　ｃｌｉｎｇｉｎｇ　ｏｎ　ｔｏ　ｔｈｅ　ｂａｃｋ　ｏｆ　ａ　ｐｉｃｋｕｐ　ｔｒｕｃｋ　ｓｐｅｅｄｉｎｇ　ａｌｏｎｇ　ｂｕｍｐｙ　ｔｒａｃｋｓ．　Ｉｔ　ｗａｓ　ｄｅｆｉｎｉｔｅｌｙ　ｌａｃｋｉｎｇ　ｓｔａｂｉｌｉｔｙ　ａｎｄ　Ｉ　ｇｏｔ　ｈｉｔ　ｉｎ　ｔｈｅ　ｆａｃｅ　ｗｉｔｈ　ａ　ｂｒａｎｃｈ！

The beach was stunning when we arrived, though. Absolutely pristine and almost deserted. We rented a snorkel and fins and started wading out (the tide was really really low!). There was lots of coral to pick through and we were a bit worried. Then some Thai people started calling to us - a lady said "not there! There lots of coral, you die!!". We decided to move a bit further down the beach.

We couldn't get out far enough to see the sharks because of the tide, so we settled for snorkeling in the shallows - I saw a butterfly fish, a clam opening and shutting and lots of other fish - including a territorial black fish who darted at me from his coral. We also got incredibly, incredibly burnt. Mine was all of my legs up to swimming costume level and John's was a variety of bits like neck, arms etc.

The next day we got tickets to Phi Phi on the night boat and just hung around at the bar with various people til the boat left. We were told, excitingly, that there were actually beds on the night boat, rather than just reclining seats. When we got on the boat at 9 we were greeted with this sight:

That's right! Two rows of 20 narrow mats on the floor - it's quite dark but for reference each pillow is one bed, this includes bag space too! It was an interesting night, especially since the air con was FREEZING! John is pretty sure he ended up mostly in the dark haired girls bed in the middle of the night! It is pretty empty in this picture, but by the time we left every bed was full.

We then got a bus to Krabi, where we found out we'd missed our morning boat! Rather than pay for another one we hung around til 1:30, then finally arrived in Phi Phi at about 3:30, having been travelling since 8 the previous night!

John is writing a post on our Phi Phi adventures, so that will come next! No photo dump today unfortunately, the internet is too slow to upload them all.

Love,

Imogen

Flikr stream of all our random pics so far! More descriptions will come when we have more time! : )

Click me for photos!

Food Post

Third time writing this, power keeps dropping, so it is likely to stay concise.
Food on the plane was pretty nice for aeroplane food, we had curry for dinner and lunch and just a croissant for breakfast. The 2nd curry looked particularly phlegmy, but it did taste nice!
Our first meal in Bangkok was omelette and fried rice cooked on the street, this was really yummy and was eaten sat on some steps at the bottom of our hotel.
Most mornings in Bangkok involved getting some fruit from the nearby street vendors, which was almost always really nice! We haven't tried durian (look it up) yet but plan to at some point.
We mostly ate street food in Bangkok but there were a couple of times we wanted to sit down and eat. The first was when we went to the wrong hotel but we ended up in a really nice cafe where Imogen had a coconut for her drink! The other time we went to a restaurant, we ended up in a really posh hotel restaurant, dress horribly and probably sweating profusely. The food was amazing! We had starters which involved making a wrap with a little leaf with items from the centre. The whole meal with drinks was about 20 pounds, even with a random dish being added to our table.
In the coach station, we decided to go to a little fast food restaurant where through lack of choice and a bit of curiosity I ended up ordered pig ears. The texture of these was disgusting and the foul taste was only disguised by large amounts of chilli sauce, Imogen ordered something that turned out equally disgusting.
The only noteworthy food we ate on the coach to Chumphon were some seaweed flavoured crisps which weren't actually that bad, but we were pretty hungry by then.
In Koh Tao we have pretty much just been eating at the same restaurant, which is right by the beach a short walk from our bungalow and on average costs us about 2.50 pounds each time. We have tried loads of food, most of which has been lovely including pad thai, red curry, green curry, fried rice and something we were introduced to call No Name which is delicious. No Name is basically deep fried vegetables with a chilli jam for dipping at the side, introduced to us by one of our diving instructors.
Since having one sandwich to take onto the boat with us, Imogen is currently obsessed with sandwiches despite the massive variety of Thai food everywhere.
Hope you are all enjoying your food!
John

Bangkok and Koh Tao

Sorry for the lack of updates so far, we've been too busy! This is going to be a bit long and rambly, but the next post will be pictures!

Bangkok

The flight was 16 hours, but we got 3 meals and free drinks and snacks, and the time went quite quickly. After each meal we got little packets of "after dinner mints" which actually turned out be seeds flavoured with fennel and mint - they were extremely odd, especially when you're expecting a mint imperial! The security in Mumbai, which was our stopover, was insane. There were guards with giant AK47s and there were about 5 different security checks.

Our first hotel, the Baiyoke Sky hotel, was amazing - the room was massive and air conditioned and the views were incredible.

We spent our 2 days in Bangkok shopping (hooray!). We visited MBK, which is a huge shopping centre, to get Thai sim cards and other bits, and the weekend market, which was astonishing. Both are warren-like with hundreds of different stalls. There's even a pet shop section at the weekend market, there were guys with boxes of puppies, we were sorely tempted to buy ourselves a little travelling buddy!


Koh Tao

We took the night bus to Koh Tao on Saturday, which was a bit of an adventure! We waited about 2 hours to get the 515 to the southern bus terminal, then overshot the terminal by miles! We had to get a taxi back to the terminal from some random village miles from Bangkok.

The bus took about 8 hours, but was pretty luxurious. The seats reclined almost fully, and we got some free crazy Thai snacks and drinks. We even had a hostess lady! We got another coach to the dock from Chumpon station, then finally got a ferry at 7am to Koh Tao!

We're staying in a little hut about a minute's walk from the beach (and the bar) with no hot water or flushing toilet! It's very basic, but beautiful. Koh Tao is really a paradise island.

We started our PADI SCUBA course the day after we arrived and have just finished the Advanced today. It is SO MUCH harder than it looks!! We've both got our sea legs now, I feel like I'm rocking just sat at the computer!

Diving is amazing, we've seen clownfish (Nemo!), angelfish, stingrays, loads of urchins and barracuda, triggger fish - there are so many fish! we're going to Shark Bay tomorrow to snorkel and hopefully spot lots of sharks!

We're going to stay on Koh Tao for another couple of days, then get the ferry to Koh Phangan, we'll give an update from there!

To follow is a post from John about food, which he is obsessed with, and a post full of pictures.

Bye!

Imogen

XXX

Our chic travelling outfits

Off on safari!!

First Post

Hi.
This is the place where we will upload pictures and updates from our travels! Hopefully you are friends and family and not creepy strangers.