Archive for the ‘Thailand’ Category
We finished our stay at Koh Phangan zipping around on a motor bike with our very our cool crash helmets. As we were not allowed to go on dirt roads we spent a lot of time back tracking (as made roads would abruptly finish without warning or notation on the map). Having a motor bike gave us so much freedom and as the roads are fairly quiet on Koh Phangan we felt confident to venture out a bit. And that we did for a steak dinner that Matt claims is the best he has had in months.
On our last morning the concierge of the hotel abruptly burst into our room as we were packing and said that we had to catch a taxi in 10 minutes, (despite being told earlier that we had a midday taxi booked), as we don’t like being rushed when we are packing we declined the offer of the taxi, to which he stated that the midday taxi would be fine, the driver would just have to make two trips.
So there we were all packed and ready to go at midday with our boat and bus transfers. We jumped on the back on the ute and held on tight as the taxi fish tailed its way down dirt roads. We arrived at the ticket counter for the boat and bus and Phil, that’s me who was holding onto the transfers for safe keeping, discovered that the pink bits of paper were no longer in her pocket! After some panicking Matt said calmly, “Phil it only costs $12 each”! After a couple of beers on the boat, I had calmed down – really when someone says 600baht, it just feels like so much more than $24!
The train ride back to Bangkok was without killer bugs – but we did get of the train pretty red eyeds and were snapped up by a crazy tuk-tuk driver in our haze. Matt agreed to pay him 120baht for the trip because the driver called him his friend. This driver I think was trying to break land spead records while dodging traffic on the Bankok highway (while we had our packs on our knees). We arrived at our hotel paled faced…but alive!
Our hotel is amazing – in this short amount of time I will not be able to do it justice – but to get a feel for the place have a look at http://www.theatlantahotel.bizland.com/ . It doesn’t look like it has changed much since the 1950’s!
While in Bangkok we have taken in a couple of movies and visited the Grand Palace – which is the number one tourist attraction in Bangkok and rightly so – it is pretty spectacular. Matt managed to miss the “Jade Buda” which is the most renound Budda in Thailand…but I thought he was pretty cute. Matt spent some time gaining enlightenment under the Banyan tree decending from the one that Budda sat under.
The most exciting news is that my dad joined us yesterday – just in time to be taken to a few local pubs, having a kid make a grab for his watch (luckily it was on securly), go for a tuk-tuk ride and catch the sky train before being whisked away to Cambodia.
As you can probably tell I am punching this blog out at a frantic pace because we have to catch a taxi to the airport in 5 minutes – off to Cambodia.
Hope that my jibberish makes some sense, I will edit this blog when I get a chance. Please pray for a safe transfer to Cambodia!
Welcome, to Fantasy Island…
Well, after spending a few more days on the beach relaxing and reading (with one night of doof-doof and cheap beer) we caught our “speed” boat at the un-godly hour of 7.00AM to Koh Phangan, a slightly smaller island just north of Koh Samui.
After clamouring off the boat onto the pier (which was no easy feat as the tide was down, everyone else still on the boat got a good look at our bums), we were greeted by our pre-arranged “super cheap” taxi – turns out they were a whole 300 Baht more expensive with the average going rate being 100 Baht) which promptly took us to our hotel, the Phangan Cabana (at the Copa,… Copacabana).
Koh Phangan is fantastic! I recommend this place to just about everyone! The island itself is a lot less developed than Koh Samui and as such has everything that is nice (the beach, the food, the bikinis) without all the rubbish (the drunk Poms, the sex tourists, street pole-dancers, the crowd). Truly and amazing place!
The biggest disadvantage to a small island is the irregular power. Within our first few hours, there was a blackout! This wouldn’t usually be a problem – however, it occurred just after I had entered my PIN number into an ATM machine! Damnit – there’s a few hundred dollars lost! Luckily the security is a little looser – a bank clerk was able to crack open the ATM and retrieve my card!
The Phangan Cabana is a sweet little place, about 20 mins from the main city (the city being about the same size of say, Inverloch). The room is all pretty basic, not much bigger than the bed – we have aircon and they installed a CD player the day we arrived. We think that they are in cahoots with the guy next door who sells pirated CDs for 100baht, ($3.20) – we’ve already purchased two! I can’t believe however that they expect to run a respectable business without any television! Groan! We do have our own toilet and shower,… outside! One advantage of an outside shower is the wind on my bum when taking a shower in the heat of the day!
I’m getting pretty good at zipping through the streets on our rented scooter, a little 120cc Honda; it’s a shame nobody here knows any road rules! Philippa seems to trust me sitting on the back (silly, silly girl!). When we upload the photo’s, you will see how cool our helmets are (note: we are the *only* people on the entire island in jeans and wearing a helmet when on a bike).
It’s a little scary how much I miss all you buggers, keep up with the news from home and send off a prayer that we will get to Bangkok safely tomorrow (don’t want the boat to sink).
Matt made me drag out my bikini that he bought me for christmas. It is great after four years of marriage that he still wants to see me in a bikini! Out came the sunscreen and the spatula to apply it thickly over my poor white skin!
The beach was great fun, little fish darting everywhere, it was shallow for about 100m, which created a great playground for kids, even us big kids, and it was soooo warm (I smiled as I thought about running into the freezing water of Wilsons Prom in Spring)! Matt and I decided earlier that playing in swimming pools is just no fun unless you have a game to play or people their to entertain you – but playing down the beach was a entirely different experience! We jumped out of the ocean into the hotel pool and then back to the ocean!
That night I had the beer bottles wrapped in wet towels tending to my sunburn…the sunburn marks suggested that I had been burnt before we went swimming (as they followed my T-shirt line). I had been in the sun for about 10 minutes earlier that day getting lunch…there is not justice for the pale skinned!
I have finished my second book for the holiday – it is great having so much time! Today I spent 30 minutes eating a calipo (the Thai equivalent) – and was remembering as a kid how such basic things once entertained me for the same length of time. I think that Matt and I have entirely wound down and are enjoying the pace of life at the moment!
We hired a motor scooter (120cc) yeasterday, as we are sick of negotiating our fair home late at night which seems to attract about a 500% premium. The cost of the motor scooter was $8 for 24hours – the same fair we paid to a taxi driver three nights ago to get us home at 11:30pm! We filled the tank of our scooter for $1! Matt was a bit white after our first trip, first time that he has taken a passenger and apparently I wriggle around a bit. He is cruising along now though – I feel a bit dorky with my closed toe shoes, jean jacket and helmet compared to others that get around in shorts and thongs! But hey, I’ve got a little more travelling that I want to survive!
Matt and I are being a little bit more adventerous and are trying to eat more local food – the food here is very tastey! We have a few select street vendours that we feel have pretty good hygiene standards and we watch them prepare their food. Don’t think that there is any chance of us loosing weight in Thailand, we have fallen in love with Banana, Coconut and Choclate rotti! We watch as the chef calves up the fresh ingredients, grating the coconut for us to see. Fresh mango juice, pad thai and assorted stir fry curries are all prepared on the street for the customer to see. The fresh seafood in Koh Samui is a real treat, though we are treading carefully (not past the king prawns though).
Few more days here before we head off too Koh Panang on Friday. I have a few post cards to write – to those who haven’t received one yet I am working on it!
The beats of the street bars are floating in as I type this message in sync. We are currently in Liaim – one of the night life centres on Koh Samui. As I look out the window I see a number of open air bars with holiday makers (from families with young children, to middle aged men looking for partners) enjoying local beer and the cool of the evening.
Well Koh Samui is everything that you would hope a holiday resort would be plenty of blond haired, big breasted women with great tans accompanied by their six foot companions who get around in tank tops (if your lucky) and stubbies. Matt seems to have a finally tuned radar for the topless bathers (lucky for him) and his half blind wife has to wait until she trips over them to get a thrill. Unfortunately Matt and I haven’t gotten into the topless bathing scene because our fair skin seems to be repelled by the sun.
Not much to report really…it is exactly as the postcard depict it…coconut trees everywhere silhouetted against the sparkling blue ocean and white sand beaches. The rolling mountains in the center of the island are quite picturesque and the view of the surrounding eighty islands makes you realise why so many people come here for holidays. Prices are a little more expensive, but if you shop around you can still get “Thai prices”. Matt and I are relaxing and trying to recover from our spending spree in Chiang Mai – we loved the markets!
…gee life is tough…
I think that we will wonder out and get a cool beer and some corn off the barbie, followed by banana and chocolate rotti!
Wish you were here…really…but not spending too much energy worrying about it :P
Don’t want to bore you with any more boring details of this place…until next time…
I’m officially sick of travelling! Lucky we are on the beach now for 7 days in Koh Samui :P
Our last day in Chiang Mai was rather un-evenful; Philppa got a Thai massage and than we saw a movie – Kung Fu Hustle (dubbed in Thai with English sub-titles). Was really bad,… yet really good (in a bad way) :P The sub-titles were sporatic at best, and our fellow movie-goers were laughing out of sequence with us! If it gets to Melbourne – a must see!
We boarded our 9.50PM sleeper train from Chaing Mai to Bangkok after an hour of arguing with the station master about getting our tickets chainged (we were originally going to get off before Bangkok). Finally he told Philippa that you could change them on the train and didn’t need to see him at all, groan! The crowd gathering behind Philippa wanting to purchase tickets were relieved to see her go!
The train trip was hot, smelly (gotta love the waste disposal system of the Thai trains – it all goes out the side, including the poop which gets caught in the wheels and stinks out the place) and full of killer bugs – somehow we ended up on a train without A/C (even though we paid for it)… someone asked us later if we were Americans (as we were whinging so much),… I replied with “hell no” and promptly shut up and enjoyed the rest of the trip :P
We arrived back in Bangkok about 15 hours later and promptly sought out the nearest fast food joint (which was KFC) – Speaking for KFC, its just not the same in Asia – kinda tastes like, ummm, Marathon Chicken (as dad once explained KFC in Asia to me)! McDonalds and Burger King is good though, its pretty much the same everywhere!!
We caught the next Tuk Tuk to Wat Po. When we got out of the Tuk Tuk we were promptly told by a man on the street that the temple was closed and that it would re-open in a few hours; he suggested that we visit his friends Suit Tailor shop to pass the time :P – we told him to go away and continued on to the very much open temple! Inside we saw the famous giant reclining Buddha which was, well, big and pretty impressive – apparently it is older than Bangkok as it was made in the 17th Centuary, well before the city was established – to date the oldest “thing” I have ever seen! Wow!
Next was a taxi ride with a friendly driver to an air-con shopping centre in Bangkok – he was realy nice untill we tried to pay with a 500 baht note (about AU$18.00) – he called us all sorts of names and got realy angry as we didnt have smaller notes (and was outraged at us thinking that he would be able to change it). The taxi fare was a little under AU$3.00 for over half an hour in the taxi; its a different world huh! We tipped him generously once we got change :P
We past the rest of the time, waiting for our next train to Koh Samui (due at 7.30PM) by watching another movie – Finding Neverland! Oh – here’s a travel trip for you, the toilets at nice shopping centres are greeeaaatt!! Much better than train stations or smelly trains! Heh – I went twice just for the fun of it!! :)
The train to Koh Samui was a little late, but was much nicer than the one from Chaing Mai – we at least had snooty, posh air-con this time! The trip was also somewhat shorter, our train arrived at its destination at about 7.00AM; we than caught a bus and a ferry boat to the Koh Samui island (sounds more exciting than it was, promise!)
We were ripped off as soon as we arrived; we paid at least double what we should have for a shuttle bus to our hotel – pffft, …and they made me get our bags off the roof of the bus! Mongrels!! :P
The hotel is great, the Samui Orchard – its also a zoo and bird park and everything, sleeping with tigers is great! The rest of the day was catching up on sleep and sitting on the beach, nice and relaxing!
That brings us to today, again, nothing exciting – we caught the hotel taxi into town and had lunch and jumped on a computer! Thats all folks – miss you all more than I would dare admit! — Matt
Well it seems that we have a bit of catching up to do!
So Matt and I collapsed on the beds at the hotel when we arrived in Chang Mai, recovering from the hotel California and the sleeper train trip with the horrible, abnoxious, drunk English men!
We didn’t have much time to rest because the next day we jumped on a mini bus and weaved through the streets of Chang Mai picking up guests for our day trip. Our gorgeous (not looking) tour guide was Kon, who was jovial and seemed to know a bit about the places we visited. Our first stop was a hilltribe the Mao people, from Lao I think. It was a forty minute walk up hill. Matt got to the point where he dug in his heals and said “I am not going any further” and we happened to be 10 meters away from the tourist sign welcoming us to the village. From what we could tell, nobody actually lived there it was purely set up for the tourists! So why not 10 meters from the road :) It was an old village that they had preserved, which made us feel a little more comfortable rather than it being a “Human Zoo” experience. We both had turns at shooting a cross bow. Matt shot a bulls eye, through target on the mellon that was hanging.
We then set off to go elephant riding. It is hard not to fall in love with the elephants. I was a big skeptic, but when you have two little cubs following beside you and then go walking and playing in the river your heart melts! There is something about the way that there trunks grab the bananas and manovour it into there mouths that gets you!
After our traditional Thai lunch we went bambo rafting, which isn’t quite as exciting as it sounds. Though it seems to take more skill that you would think from observing. Matt ended up in the drink after having a go, it was the rapids that caught him out. We all got wet, which is always fun.
We visited the Karen tribe (one of the versions as you will read later), and purchased some weaving – a piece that took three days to weave. When we paid the lady 140Baht ($5), she looked at us as though we were gullible for paying so much. We did pay alot because at the market the next day we saw similar pieces for 65Baht ($2.20), but as Matt said “I’m not going to pay someone 3 dollars for 3 days work!”.
Somehow I persuaded Matt to walk down to the waterfall that we visited. You couldn’t see the waterfall for all the tourists swimming in the water! I think that Matt was pleased with the view (*Matt elbows Phil*). That night we went out to the night markets – the markets are soooooo much fun here in Chang Mai and had Burger King for dinner – too much culture for one day :P
The next day Matt couldn’t get out of bed for our 7am start to visit the Golden Triangle and more hill tribes. From his lips I could make out “No more walking” in a faint wisper. God love him he was exhausted and the Burger King was playing havock with his tummy – figures. I spent the day on the mini bus, over 7 hours of driving (lucky Matt didn’t come). The golden triangle is nicely set up for tourists, I caught a speed boat over to an enclave in Lao that you do not have to go though imigration in order to go shopping. It was a bit of a joke. The speed boat also took us to see the Paradise Casino set up at the norther tip of Myanmar.
A lot of tourist take this day trip in order to get their passports extended. I met some young Aussies that had run out of money and time, waiting for money to clear from their parents at home.
The rest of the day was filled with visiting hilltribes. We visited another two versions of the Karen tribe, affectionately known as the long necks and the big ears. This felt a bit more like a human zoo, but the village have a cover charge for visitors and plenty of sovineer shops. There where another two tribes living by there side, one which only washed twice a month because they believe that the spirits recognised them by their sent. The hilltribes are all refugees from countries such as Tibet, Myanmar, China and Lao, some have been here for only a couple of years, others have been here for hundreds of years.
Since then….hmmm…we have been relaxing, marketing, enjoying Chang Mai. We love it up here and could easily stay another week however we are catching a train tomorrow and heading south to Koh Samui, two overnight sleepers. Please pray for no drunk English men :P
Thank you for all your emails and comments. I am trying to get through them and answer them individually, because we really appreciate the news from home. It is good to hear that the water catchments are filling up – I just feel sad for all the little kids that have just started back at school. That is enough ranting from me.
Puff,… what a week!
After tromping around Bangkok for 3 or 4 hours, we finally found a TAT (Tourism Authority of Thailand) Travel Agency who promptly booked us on some tours for the following few days and than a train to Chaing Mai.
We woke up the following morning nice and early and boarded a mini bus which took us to the Bridge on the River Kwai (go on, start whistling the tune). There was a small museum set up there which was absolutley facinating (however slightly unconventional – we weren’t entirely convienced that all the ehbits were what they claimed to be). We saw the final resting place of hundreds of Australian (and Dutch, English and US) soldiers and the now re-constructed bridge. Next was the Hell-Fire Pass, where another museum was set-up (this one was constructed by the Australian government and was realy slick) – we learnt about the role of the allied POW forces in constructing the infamous railway line and the horendus conditions they lived in (well, those that DID live). Seeing the actual cutting (which was a short walk away) actually brought a tear to my eye.
Than we saw some waterfall (more like a rapid), which was apparently beautiful :P
A local dinner followed on a raft-boat and then we were taken (by jet-boat) to our accomodation – which was nothing more than a shack floating on the river and a mattress on the floor with a door that would not shut properly, let alone lock! We nick named it the hotel California, because the host could not stop singing the song. We had a lot of fun chatting with the other tourists (mostly Dutch) and managed to get a few winks of sleep before we were whisked off to some more *wonderful* waterfalls! (7 actually – I only saw 4, but Philippa saw them all). We had a lot of fun on the tour, packed a lot into the two days. The most amusing part of the whole trip was a couple of French tourists (hippy backpackers) who where happy to try anything – even Cobra mixed with mull!! I’m sure that they will spend a lot of time in the loo on their trip :)
The trip back to Bangkok was long and uneventful; we were finally dropped off at the train station for our trip to Chaing Mai at about 6.00PM. We waited at the train station for what seemed like a month; I paid a total of 6 baht to use the toilet (2 baht each time) – I kept chickening out as they where that gross! We finally borded our overnight *express* train at about 10.00PM.
The train was clean, and turned out to be a relatively fun ride except for the fact the it seemed to stop at each station along the way; the train got lost and headed back the direction we come from for a few hours; the drunk brittish tourists (brickies) and of course – they only had squat toilets! We had a ball!!
We finally arrived in Chaing Mai and was greeted by our hotels driver, who was somewhat anoyed at the fact that the train was 2 and half hours late (and he had been waiting for us the whole time). We slept for the rest of the day, ready for a next set of tours the following day!
More to come soon…love all you guys and miss you heaps. Sorry about the spam on the comments site, we have kinda fixed the loophole.
Thailand…well the story if I had blogged two days ago would have been very different to the story that I am going to share with you today.
Arriving in Thailand was the biggest culture shock we have faced to date. After being in Singapore for a week and quite comfortable, to arrive in Thailand was a bit of a shock. We walked the streets the first day in absolute shock at how overt the sex tourism industry is over here. The images that we saw on our first day included many older western men with young asian girls in bars, walking down the street, at restraunts; many young girl scantly dressed hanging out in bars, flashing other customers; men on the street flashing cards of children “for sale” to westerner walking by… it was a bit of a shock after being in such conservative Asian countries. After the initial outrage – and Matt wanting to beat up some middle aged western men with young Thai girls – we have realised that it is quite a complex situation.
The next morning we sat in our quaint little back packers “Suk 11″ and spoke with a lady who is doing research into people trafficing. She is actually here to see what NGOs are doing to work on the issue inorder to impliment some interventions in Australia, where apparently we have our own problems! Talking with our friend Wei who has been working in Bangkok for the last twelve months, she said that most of the women that we see as tourists are there (to some degree) of their own volition. It is seen as a big status simble for Thai women to marry western men and the western men generally help the entire families. From what we can gather it is not uncommon for lonely western men to come to Thailand in search of love. Love is a concept for those who can offord it and many of the Thai women see it as their duty to their families to make a good match with a wealthy westerner. So that begs the question who is using who…etc, etc…it is only when you are on holidays that you have time to think about these things.
There is a problem with people trading here, however, apparently they are the “workers” that you generally don’t see on the street. Generally it is the women, girls and boys that “service” the Thai population that are the ones bought from the poor rural families. It makes my blood boil and hence my 10 year plan to change the world is beginning to take shape :) …in Maccas were we took refuge – somewhere familiar and safe.
So that was our first day. Since then we have realised that there is a bit more to Thailand – thank God – because we were wondering what we were going to do for our four weeks that we are here for! Our mate Wei took us out to a restraunt last night called Condoms and Cabbages, which was established to raise awareness of family planning and combat the spred of HIV. It was a very classy restraunt with a bit of a fun twist – the food was fantastic too! It was great to see Wei and she was very generous with her local knowledge, letting us know the amount we should pay for a Tuk Tuk ride and telling us the places to visit around town. She also took us to the largest open air market in the Southern Hemisphere today – it was great! There is a really good range of clothes, homeware…everything, things are cheep and they seemed to be a decent quality. I am beginning to see why people recommend Thailand for good shopping. As Matt and I have been saving so much to go away we are finding it difficult to get back into buying things, especially for ourselves. So in four hours of shopping all we bought was a singlet top for $3 for myself!
This evening we caught a movie…”Meet the Fouckers”…prior to the movie we had to stand for about a minute while a tribute to the king was played prior to the feature. They love the king over here. The really beautiful thing is that the king really seems to love his people as well. He has no problem speaking against the corruption in the government, though I think that he has little real power.
Tonight we were feeling a little home sick so we decided to dine at the Outback Aussie Restraunt. We learnt a bit about what Australian cuisine is :) I think that I will stick with the local tucker from now on.
We are heading to the travel agents tomorrow to make some plans for the next three weeks, I can see beaches and northern hill tribes will probably enter into it.
Thanks for the emails, prayers, SMSs, phone call…we feel very loved…even if we do get a little home sick from time to time. Oh and my registration has come through from the UK!