Jen Gatecrashes Travel and Blog…!

Hello everyone!

I was once like you sat on your computers at home but not this week…oh no I was in on the action! Well all in all our Chris has unfortunately gathered a strange accent, a strange bag & a strange jumper but on the plus side he has shed a lot of hair, a lot of “extra bone” and has gained a hell of a lot of good stories! In airport and very sleepy so cannot write too much but Hong Kong in a few points…

– Lots of food, lots of drink, lots of big buildings, lots of big lights, lots of people! Had a fab week..so much to do & see. Loved the place & loved catching up with Chris. (Even if he did make me eat sea slugs…!) Will fill you in properly at home. He is looking forward to seeing everyone. (And the buffet that Im sure Mum has spread out at the ready!) See you all very shortly! lots of love xx

Hong Kong in 200 Words or Less…..

So then, the journey comes to an end.  Apologies for not putting anything up over the last couple of weeks but Hong Kong was a bit crazy and Bangkok was well…..Bangkok.  I’ll write a bit about HK (with input from Jenny obviously) and then do something proper to finish everything off when I get back.

So I got to the hotel a few hours after Dad went for a shower and then wandered on down to the lobby to find him…..a bit strange seeing people, I was actually quite nervous on the plane!  All good though and was awesome to catch up.  Jenny arrived a couple of hours after me…looking slightly dishevelled but in good spirits after her 16 hour journey.

So in short Hong Kong is an awesome place, the famous skyline is definitely as cool as it looks in the photos.  We wandered round the key areas over a couple of days and by night I was forced to eat large substantial meals full of rich food as I was apparently looking too thin……not sure about that but there you go! 

Jenny and I went out on Wednesday night and chaos obviously ensued.  I’ll write more about it later on but we made some new Chinese friends who kept plying us with drinks, getting us to mime on stage and in one slightly more boring case get accosted by one of the groomers for the Spanish Olympic Equestrian Team.

I’m writing this from the airport at Dubai, another 2 hours until the final leg.  Seems like a strange thing to say but at the moment I don’t feel as though it has been 6 months, but then you think back to a city near the top of the year and I can barely remember it. 

More thoughts in a few days

x

Luang Prabang > Vientiane

Has it really been 7 days since I last wrote something? Doesn’t feel like it but hey ho, suppose anybody who is still reading this deserves something to brighten their day. Luang Prabang was pleasant enough, went out to a waterfall one day which was nice or would have been if it wasn’t for the pouring rain. The best part of the 4 days I spent there was getting up just before 6am to see the monks walking down the road receiving alms from the local people. Other than that it was a fairly relaxing few days, without embarking on a tour and I haven’t got the money left for those kind of extravagances, it was pretty hard to get out of town and into the hills.

I left Luang Prabang for Vang Vieng. For those of you who don’t know Vang Vieng has become a kind of backpackers mecca over the past few years…and not particularly in a good way in my opinion. It is the essentially the center for adventure sports in Laos so there are some great opportunities for kayaking, caving and all that jazz. At the same time is also has a huge drug problem and I do mean big. Not in the way of one of London’s tougher neighborhoods but in that there are countless cafes/restaurants/bars that just play endless repeats of Friends on the TV for the doped out masses. I’ve got nothing against the people who do it…..actually I do but let’s disregard that…but it just ruins the place. Young travelers drinking opium spiked tea, eating ‘space’ pizzas or whatever else the chef has decided to spike don’t exactly make the place appealing. Tubing down the river complete with bars on the side is one of SE Asia’s ‘rites of passage’ but both the girl I met up with again in Vientiane from Luang Prabang and I didn’t bother. Mostly because doing it by yourself would suck but for a couple of other reasons as well. I only ended up going to Vang Vieng to break up the journey down to Vientiane and for that it was worth it but other than that it was a pointless stopover.

Vientiane is the capital of Laos and you would hardly call it bustling with life. A population of just over 200,000 people in a fairly big area gives the impression that the city is empty most of the time. Vientiane is the one city where the French influence on Laos is nearly impossible to escape from. From the street names to bakeries, the language to the impossibly ugly rip off of the Arc De Triomophe, French influence can be seen everywhere. Not that that is a bad thing of course…especially in terms of food. Last night I found a restaurant in what appeared to be a wine cellar taken straight out of Provence complete with aging overweight French chef who did nothing but walk around talking obnoxiously to his customers whilst chain smoking filter less cigarettes. But I did have a 3 course meal for a fiver consisting of french onion soup, a superbly cooked steak with 3 different sauces and a fruit salad……Poirot I salute you.

Other than eating rather better than I am used to I visited the Buddha Staue Park for a couple of hours yesterday. This place is basically the result of some crazy man who decided that his mission in life would be to create religious statues out of concrete and plonk them all in a field. Pretty cool actually for the most part but you couldn’t escape the feeling that there was something just a little but ‘wrong’ about the whole thing. The guy got chucked out of Laos a number of years back and did the same thing just across the river in Nong Khai (Thailand) so I might check out that one in a few days as well.

I think I’ll spend another day or two here finishing things off and then head across the river back into Thailand. My plan to go to Angkor Wat for a couple of days was scuppered when I realised how expensive it would be to get to Siam Reap and then fly back to Bangkok in time for my flight to Hong Kong. Not to mention the $30 dollar per day entrance fee, so I have put that one aside for the future. I don’t want to spend 5 days in Bangkok so will probably get there, dump all my stuff in storage and then leave for 2 or 3 days with just a day pack to explore Ayutthaya the old capital, the floating markets and maybe depending on if I have time the infamous Bridge Over the River Kwai. So I should be keeping busy.

Will let you all know how it goes!

x

We all Live in a Green Treehouse

I just got back from the Gibbon Experience, it was…interesting. Before I start this rant I should say that in the dry season my experience would probably have been much better but in the rainy season it was pretty much a complete waste of $200.

We arrived at the office in the morning and were kept waiting until after we were meant to leave for somebody to actually open the place up. The short safety video that we watched was not exactly what you might call comprehensive considering the activities we would actually be doing, then again this is Laos so I guess it could have been a lot worse – at least they had a safety video! The lady in the office was moody as hell and did not seem interested in any questions that we had.

We loaded up the truck and drove for 2 hours towards the reserve. This is where the problems started. There were a couple of small notices in the office informing anybody who accidentally stumbled upon them that in the rainy season the truck may not be able to cross the river, in which case participants would be required to walk for 5-7 hours to reach the camp. Fair enough you might say – they have warned us about the possibility. The problem is that they just don’t tell you exactly what this walk will entail. It took us 5 hours to reach the village just outside the main part of the jungle along a road that anybody not of decent fitness would have seriously struggled. So we reach the village, rest up for 10 minutes and then have another 1 and a half hour trek across the fields and through the jungle to the first treehouse, by this time it was 4.30pm and we had been walking/trekking for over 5 hours. Awesome we are here everyone thought; alas we had another 2 and a half hours to go following what we supposed to be a track though it was impossible to tell.By the time we had got there just before 8pm everybody was shot to pieces, I had absolutely nothing left to give. There was no warning of just how hard the trekking would be, we had some fit people in our group and they were in the same position as me. Everybody fell over at least 5 times and towards the end in the dark it was a miracle that nobody was seriously injured, if they had been then I have no idea what we would have done to get them out. After showering (if you can call it that) and generally tidying ourselves up we opened up the Tiffin box containing our dinner for 8 people. The first night consisted of cabbage, rice, boiled cucumbers, something else cabbage like with a few chunks of potentially rat meat and carrots. After 9 hours of walking with only a crappy sandwich provided by the company that was what we were meant to eat to replace our energy, oh sorry I forgot we also had green tea and ovaltine. On first sight there was barely enough food there for 4 people let alone 8 adults who had spent a day like we had, it turned out that the lack of food was not that much of a problem as its complete blandness/awfulness did not exactly encourage people to have seconds. I ate a packet of Oreos I had bought with me.

We did a couple of zip lines on that first day in between long stretches of jungle walking. It is a pretty cool way to get around it must be said but the first time was a slightly nerve racking experience! Clip the safety line onto the cable followed by the roller and very rudimentary braking system and basically just run off the edge the platform! Before you know it you are flying at a brisk pace with the canopy below you and the odd tree branch smacking you in the face, it gives you a great buzz. The zip lines on the first day were pretty good but by the end it was dark and zipping in the dark is not quite so much fun…..incidentally it was also the only thing the safety video was clear you shouldn’t do.

The second day was more like what we had expected, even though breakfast consisted of exactly what we had for dinner the night before. We had a 2 hour walk through the jungle interspersed with one or two zip lines before arriving at a waterfall and natural swimming pool. The swim was gratefully received and one of the few times we felt just about normal for the entire three days. Some suitable calls of ‘CANNONBALL’ from the rocks meant that when we went for lunch everyone was feeling good. Then lunch arrived, one again it was cabbage, cabbage, a few boiled potatoes and some rice. We did however find a chili plant growing nearby so we plucked them off and chopped them into everything we had to give it at least some flavor. Boy are freshly picked birds eye chilies hot!

A bit more walking led us to the best part of the three days, 3 long zip lines with only a 10 minute walk between them, this was quite simply incredible. If you can imagine yourself flying about 150m from the floor over the canopy for 300 meters or so then would be just about there. Nothing to stop you from falling apart from your safety rope if the roller somehow became disconnected, to the right and left were endless trees shrouded in mist with the odd treehouse just in view. Over those 3 zips the Tarzan call and I became firm friends! This was a lot more like it; the first day almost seemed worth going through to do this. The group of 8 had split at this point as our treehouse only had room for 6. So 2 people ended up in a small treehouse a fair while away, not actually that bad a thing for them considering they were a couple and it was the girls birthday – “Hey son, did your mother and I ever tell you about where you were conceived?” Anyway the treehouse the rest of us had had the most amazing view, absolutely stunning. Unfortunately it also had a population of spiders rivaling that of your local zoo, along with a couple of rats who popped up now and then, big jungle cockroaches and something that looked like a grasshopper on steroids with 3 sets of wings. Certain members of the group did not sleep that well! The discovery these creatures of the night came just after it began to pour down with rain and we resigned ourselves to another long, long walk back to the main road in the morning, all in all not a good half an hour!

Our fears were confirmed the next morning when we were told we would be walking the 8 hours or so back to the main road. It was actually easier than on the first day, maybe because we expected it but mostly because we stuck to the dirt track and didn’t have to spend so much time inside the jungle I think. Anyway we trudged on through the rain, waist high rivers and Glastonbury style mud before eventually getting back to the road around 5pm. All in all the experience was not worth the $200 that we all paid for it. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the place to someone in the dry season but at this time of year the effort of getting there and around outweighs the fun aspect of the trip. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the company provided a bit more information about the trekking aspect, discounted the price during the low season to take into account the day that you lose inside the camp itself or was just a bit more organised. Still it was good fun at times.

Caught a two day boat from Huay Xai down to Luang Prabang down the Mekong. Not the most relaxing of journeys thanks to being jammed into the long boat like a pack of sardines but this was at least partly offset by the stunning scenery we had for the entire trip. Completely forrested hills on either side of the river interspersed with small villages and lone huts. We had an overnight stop in a random village where I was enlisted by a restaurant guy to write a sign in english telling people why they should come to his restaurant. After eating the food I wish I hadn’t been so complimentery but at least I got a free bottle of lao-lao out of it. Weather and boat were both much better on the second day the only thing that spoiled it was the rather large loudmouthed girl with an absolutely hideous Dublin accent sitting just behind me. Sends shivers down my spine just thinking about it!

Luang Prabang is pretty nice, really quiet and peaceful for the most part and with loads and loads of Wats (temples) to explore. Not that I have the patience for any old temple after all this time but some of them have turned out to be pretty nice. Will stay here a couple of days and then head down to Vientiene for a bit before *hopefully* going to Cambodia for a couple of days to look around Angkor Wat before heading back to Bangkok around the 24th to catch my flight to Hong Kong. But I will be sure to write something before then so don’t despair!

x

Meanwhile on the otherside of the Mekong………

So I have switched countries again and am now lounging around in Laos.  Last couple of days in Chiang Mai were ok, fair few people to hang around with so all was good.  The final day of the cookery course was again a success, though slightly less so seeing as I managed to slice the tip of my finger off (well a good portion of my fingerprint anyway).  Not much else to report on Chiang Mai, took a trip out to the zoo which although relatively modern did little to float my boat, the lion enclosure was a disgrace.  The main reason for taking the trip out there though was to see the pair of pandas that Thailand has on loan from China.  All pandas in captivity are technically loaned out by the Chinese for silly amounts of money, but process had led to a much better understanding of how to look after pandas in zoos.  They were certainly the best looked after animals in the zoo anyway.  I’d never seen a panda before and after seeing the quality ‘Kung Fu Panda’ at the cinema in Bangkok I thought now would be as good a time as any!  Very cute looking, except for the photo on the wall that showed the pair doing it ‘panda style’ if you get my drift……nudge nudge wink wink and all that.

Left Chiang Mai yesterday afternoon and took a public bus to Chiang Khong, the nearest border point with Laos on the western edge of the Mekong River.  Quite a strange experience sorting it out yourself as pretty much everybody just books a package with a guesthouse that includes the bus, food, night in Chiang Khong and the slow boat down to Luang Prabang (main Laos city nearest to the border).  Got some strange looks from people along the lines of ‘independent travel, huh? How did you sort that out?’…..enough said really.  Anyway woke up and went to the border this morning, got across without a hitch apart from the $12 fine I had for overstaying my visa by one day.  The boats used to cross the river are completely flat bottomed so you are no more than about 8 inches from the water, you should be able to see that in the pictures.  It is only a 2 minute trip over the river but definitely the best way to cross a border, quite exciting!

Have manged (through a bit of luck) to get myself on the Gibbon Experience for the next 3 days .  This is basically a series of treehouses built in the rainforest that according to the disclaimer I signed earlier can be anything up to 100-150m up in the canopy!  That’s a hell of a big tree but will see when I get there tomorrow.  You do a bit of hiking through the forest, possibly 7 hours on the first day if you cannot cross the road using a truck but your mode of transport mostly consists of a series of zip lines that have been erected throughout the National Park!  Again the disclaimer I signed my life away to earlier says that you have to be prepared for lines that are up to (but not excluding anything else) 150m high and 1000m long!  That is a heck of a zip line!  It was pretty pricey at nearly 100 quid but for 3 days and the overall experience it should be worth it hopefully!

After that I’m not sure what I’ll be doing.  Definitely be taking the slow overnight boat from Huay Xai at the border to Luang Prabang and will probably stay there for a week or so, maybe do a trek.  I should be meeting up with someone from Chiang Mai for a week or two to go down through Laos so a bit depends on that.

Other than this there is not much else left to say!  So I will see you when I get back in a couple of days!  Oh and obviously my phone will not work out there so I’ll be out of contact from tomorrow morning (saturday) until Monday afternoon.  Need to sort out a Laos SIM as well, but my Thai one still works here at the moment as the border is only 100m away.

xx

Cookery School – Day Two

Moved outside of the city today to carry on the course.  The school as a second site adjacent to the house of Sompon the owner.  Much nicer than being in the middle of the city!  Bigger and better facilities, the pace seemed a bit more relaxed and just to make the American girls day (and mine too I must admit) there were 4 stupidly cute puppies just willing you to play with them!

First was an introduction to Thai ingredients which was a bit of a bore to be honest, passing round bowls of rice and smelling fish sauce etc, but for people who know nothing about Thai food I would imagine it is excellent.  It was all done by a very funny Thai girl however so her constant jokes meant I managed to stay awake for the duration.

The first dish of the day was that most Thai of soups, Tom Yam Goong or Hot and Sour Soup with Prawns to you non thai speakers.  Sompon himself (owner, tv chef) led the demonstration in a thankfully air-conditioned room.  We all piled in after he had finished to see if his cooking matched his extremely impressive knife work, you will be glad to know that it did.  Bloody hot though, he had put seven birds-eye chillies in a soup made for one!  My attempt was pretty successful I must say, only used 4 chillies seeing as all I had had eaten so far today was a cup of coffee and a sweet basil leaf.  Definitely one to do at home:

Second up was Thai Fish cakes, again demonstrated by Sompon, who was loosening up a bit now.  Very easy to make apart from the actual cake making part.  We had to do it one handed and then slide the patty into the frying pan….it’s a bit hard to make something round and flat when the oil is spitting up at you!  Anyway they don’t look that great but they tasted fantastic.  I didn’t make the sauce and kind of spilled it over the plate a bit, apologies.

Third dish of the day was Green Chicken Curry.  The paste had already been made so it was basically a case of chopping up a load of ingredients, cooking them in coconut cream and serving it up.  Mine tasted ok, not as good as Sarah’s (that is a damn good curry I must say love) and thanks to the very dark paste we used looks kind of grey in the pictures!  When they cook curries out here, at least in decent places, they apparently use brass woks as the more even heat allows the curry to keep its color better.  Considering how much a brass saucepan is I don’t think I will be buying one any time soon!

For the last dish of the morning we did that backpacker favourite (mainly because it costs about 60p or less off the street) Phad Thai.  Basically fried noodles with peanuts and whatever else you want in there to bulk it up.  Not much explanation here and they tasted bloody good, better than the green curry actually.  The addition of sugar balanced the flavours out nicely.

The afternoon was taken up with a Minced Chicken and Mint Salad and a desert of water chestnuts with sugar syrup and coconut milk.  The salad was pretty tasty actually, if you put a lot more mint in there and boosted the flavours it would would be much better.  A big bowl of this stuff as a sport on tv snack would be great, make a change from sarnies anyhow!  The water chestnuts were really refreshing, really easy to do and the food colouring added to them looks awesome.

So I have one more day tomorrow and then I’m done, I might extend it to do the two final courses but I’m not sure yet, will see how I feel on the day.  And finally for the picture you all wanted to see from the beginning one of the puppies and Sompon chopping away at a cucumber.  More later!

Cooking Course in Chiang Mai + A Few Photos

So today was the first day of a three day cookery course I am doing in Chiang Mai, pretty cool I have to say.  Not having cooked a single thing for myself over the last 6 months my knife skills and gernal cooking ability was a bit bruised and battered but I got back into the swing of things fairly quickly.  Over 6 hours you cook 6 different dishes, eating each one after you have cooked it (missing out on breakfast was not a problem).

The day started with a lesson in vegetable topiary, as in those pretty little roses you see made out of tomatos are leaves made out of carrots.  The roses are actually pretty easy, a bit like trying to peel an apple without breaking the peel.  We then made a lotus leaf, again from a tomato which looked pretty cool.  I did fail first time on the carrot leaf though…..it looked like something that had been gentically modified to assume an appearence that was anything but leaf like.  My second attempt was a bit more respectable but still a bloody fiddily process.  They all made good decoration for my plate of spring rolls though.

First dish we did was a minced pork and glass noodle soup, very nice and suprisingly easy to make, only took 10 minutes of cooking once the ingrediants and been prepared.  After that was the spring rolls, seems the ‘pastry’ of spring rolls is very different to anything else but I guess the nearest thing in the UK would be a slightly thicker filo pastry, actually much thicker.  They came out pretty good and looked great next to my tomato rose/lotus flower: (sorry about the quality I forgot to change the setting on the camera):

 After that was my favourite dish of the day, a royal roasted duck red curry.  Rather than just the usual kaffir lime leavels, basil and eggplants (they have about 8 types over here) you had fruit in as well, grapes, pinapple and a couple of other bits.  Tasted fantastic after we had made it, presentation wasn’t quite up to scratch but who cares really?

The rest of the afternoon was taking up making a chicken and ginger stir fry, chicken in pandanas leaves and sweet sticky rice with mango.  Personally I though my chicken and ginger stir fry recipe was better but I will admit that theirs looked a lot nicer!

Can’t remember what I am cooking tomorrow but I am heading out to the guys house in the countryside rather than the restaurant kitchen in the city so that should be interesting.  Chiang Mai itself is nice, very calm and peaceful compared to the chaos of Bangkok but there is still plenty of nightlife knocking around and things to see.  Despite being much smaller than the capital, Chiang Mai has almost the same number of temples (300), went to a couple yesterday which you can see at the bottom of the page.  Will probably go out to do some trekking after I finish the cookery course but it is so damn humid up here at the moment, the threat of rain hangs over you from the moment you wake up until you step back into bed. 

Might go to see the Muay Thai boxing tonight but it is bit of a trek from where I am, from anywhere actually.  I have taken up walking everywhere again which is nice.  After being in Bangkok and Kao Tao where I either didn’t move around a lot or took tuk tuks it is nice to be using my legs again.   Have to do something to counter the effects of all the food I’m eating at the moment! 

So the photos below are of the Ko San Road at night in Bangkok, a very funny headline in the Bangkok Post newspaper, the beach in Koh Tao and one of the caberet act.  There are a couple more up on flickr but not many, haven’t taken many interesting pictures recently but I shall get back into the swing of things!

     

   

See you all next time!

xx

An (apparently) long waited for update

Sorry about the lack of posting for the last week or two, I was struggling to find much to say seeing as most of my days have been filled with diving, lying on a beach and eating! Not a lot of grade A material for an interesting blog post! But I will relate the missing time in as interesting a way as I can….

So Koh Tao was great, everything came together pretty well. In general I was diving every other day as quite a few of the days were fairly crap as regards to the weather. The dives were mostly great, a day trip out to Sail Rock which is essentially a big rock pinnacle sticking out of the water was cool, the best part about the site is that it has a ‘chimney’, essentially a long vertical swim through from around 4m down to 18m wide enough for 2 divers to go down side by side – lots of cool stuff to see. The visibility wasn’t great on the day we were there but I sorted out my deep dive qualification on the first dive (30m) but unfortunately had a pressure build up in my sinuses on the second dive and had to come up after 10 minutes, I had only got down to 8m but the squeeze was not nice. There are only really 3 other dives worth describing in a bit more detail. The first of these was at Chumpon down at 30m, we sat on the floor and hung around for 2 minutes before about 6 sharks (oceanic black tips mostly, although there was one decent sized bull shark) came out of the murky water and started pottering around, very cool. Had to shallow up quite quickly due to being so deep for a relatively long period of time – my dive watch gave me 3 minutes until it went into deco as we were leaving. Second dive worth speaking about was the first night dive, first one I have done actually and a pretty good way to start I must say. It literally is pitch black down there apart from the torches which are pretty crappy. Trying to judge your depth and keep level without the aid of a computer or looking at console is actually pretty hard….I just followed the DM. But we did see a big Hawksbill turtle, hunting barracuda (one got a kill right in front of us….awesome sight) various nocturnal fish and if you turned the lights of and stirred up the plankton then they began to glow which was cool. Balance that dive with the second night dive the day after, we were all hanging on the line as somebody had problems with their ears. There were also 4 people who just finished their open water and were doing the first part of their advanced cause so they were a bit nervy. All of a sudden a guy drops down through us head first, cracks me on the head with his tank and turns around as if to say ‘what you doing here?’ tosser. About 12 people then dropped down causing absolute fucking chaos, no one had any idea who was who and where they were meant to be going. Only having one dive master for the advanced group plus me and a couple of other people wasn’t great but it was the actions and attitude of the divers from one of the other schools that was a complete joke. Ruined the rest of the dive to be honest. But there you go, take the rough with the smooth and all that, it won’t always be brilliant. The diving around Ko Tao is not as good as the other side of Thailand but the weather and conditions are better at this time of year, was a really nice place to chill out for a couple of weeks as well.

The island was quite busy when I arrived but then quietened down dramatically as at least 3/4 of the people went over to Koh Phannagn for the full moon party, those 3-4 days were the best ones I had on the island. There weren’t so many motorbikes needlessly crowding the roads (seeing as most places are a 15 min walk at most), the dive sites were much quieter and the place seemed to have a better atmosphere. Contrast that to about 2 days after the full moon when the place was mobbed with people coming over from the party and the place almost turned into another version of the Koh San Road – pretty much everyone I had been spending my time with now decided it was time to leave Koh Tao.  Must be me getting old but why is it so difficult for people to put on a top or even a vest when they are in a bar?  As I have mentioned numerous time….people get some respect for the local culture!  Oh and while I am at it, driving an ATV (quad bike) on paved roads when you could walk in about 2 minutes does not make you look cool….in fact it makes you look like a cock.

The night before I was due to catch the boat/bus combination up to Bangkok turned into a rather big night. Originally we were going to the Muay Thai boxing but they wanted a stupid amount of money to get in so we went to the free ladyboy show instead, much more fun! A few slightly strange sights but the guy who did Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” whilst changing from a woman into a man, scrubbing off make up, changing clothes etc was quality.   One of the guys in our group got dragged off back stage and came pack with lip marks all over his nipples, I got away with someone (he, she, mixture??) telling me they loved my eyes. Think we left there about 11-12 and then I stumbled home at something like 4.30am. I woke up the next morning an hour after the boat had left which also meant I would miss my flight to Chiang Mai from Bangkok that I booked. Stupid Thai Air Asia don’t allow you to make any changes within 48 hours (what?!) so I had to write that off.  Lesson of the day kids is don’t drink buckets of Sangsom the night before having to catch a 10am boat.  I did manage to complete my advanced diving course though after nearly a year so am now qualified to 30m depth and at least round here that’s where the cool stuff is.

The journey back to bangkok was alright, bloody glad I missed the boat the day before actually.  Catamarans may be fast but they don’t half bob up and down with the swell, there were lots of  extremely sick looking people knocking around!  8 hour bus journey after that which was ok, nice bus, tv etc.  I also updated my iPod with a couple of movies before I left Koh Tao.  If you get the chance to see it then go and see ‘Lars and the Real Girl’ absolutely bloody brilliant film.  Essentially it is about a lonely guy who can’t talk to women who buys a true to life sex doll off the internet but has a delusion that she is real.  He does not use the doll for her intended purpose (doesn’t even kiss her until the end) but instead treats her as a real person essentially using her to learn how to speak to girls and get over his insecurities.  The scene just before and just after the dolls funeral are some of the most moving bits of film I have seen in ages.

So I am back in Bangkok and have re-booked my flight to Chiang Mai for tomorrow afternoon.  Will sort out a cookery course for a few days, maybe do some trekking and then see where I go after that.  Looking into going into Burma for a 5 day tour.  It is a bit contrived and you don’t get anywhere near the main parts of the country and it is meant to be ‘like Thailand but different’, would be interesting though I think.  Still thinking about going down into Laos or maybe I’ll just get off the track around Northern Thailand, we shall see!

In terms of photos there isn’t that much to put up.  I didn’t hire an underwater camera whilst diving as it was about 20 quid a day and the visibility wasn’t too hot sometimes.  The rest from Koh Tao are mostly of the beach and I haven’t got many in Bangkok yet.  I’ll take a look later and think about putting something up to give you an idea.

Will probably go and check out Patpong’s night market later on or I might just skip out on that and go see Kung Fu Panda at the cinema….

xx

Diving in Koh Tao

Evening all,

Caught a flight from Bangkok last Tuesday down to Koh Samui, very strange airport much more like a boutique hotel than somewhere that has a dozen flights land a day. A couple of hours on a boat and I docked in Koh Tao. Dive resort is pretty good, no beach bungalows which sucks but room is good enough and there is a nice beach bar which is a decent enough place to watch the sunset. Unfortunately I apparently bought the shit weather with me, day I landed everything clouded over and the sun has hardly been out since. Not much rain but the wind is playing havoc with the sea, coming back from the afternoon dives has been made more interesting by trying to avoid the heavy wooden table that has a habit of sliding around the deck trying its best to break someones leg!

Haven’t dived the last two days. Didn’t get to bed until 4am this morning so the idea of getting on a boat this afternoon with the swell as it is did not appeal to my already queasy stomach. Have a 7am start in the morning so having quiet night reading on the beach, not a bad alternative. The diving so far has been so-so. One site had some great swim throughs and caves to explore, the shafts of light coming down through the gaps in the rock were cool. Tomorrow should be better, going to the other side of the island out and into the sea a bit, more life out there apparently – some black tip sharks and other larger reef life.

Sorted out my last couple of dives to get my advanced certification and rewarded myself with a new scuba mask, was going to get some fins as well but they were pretty pricey for anything more than your standard rental models so will hold off on that for now. Also have a night dive course booked, something I meant to do in Malaysia but never got round to.

Not really a lot to say as you can tell from the rather labored and boring message above but once the weather clears I shall stick up another post with some pictures and what not.

A Shock in Bangkok (wow…that’s lazy even for me)

So I arrived a ciuple of days ago as I said before.  Still haven’t done an awful lot but thought I would make a couple of observations:

• Coming from India it is a bit of a shock walking down the Khao San Road to realise that there are such things as female legs and god forbid even breasts.
• The number of english people is astonishing.  Of course I knew the area was a backpacker havan but I didn’t expect anything on this scale.  It almost seems like a everyone from Loughborough decided to move to Thailand for a couple of days.
• Coming out of the India ‘bubble’ isn’t very easy, especially when you are thrust straight back into the real, or rather neon enchanced world of the Khao San Road.  Coming to terms with pissed people drinking on the streets, hordes of scantily clad Thai women tempting you into bars, fast food signs on every corner and the pumping sound track of the Khao San Road tends to get to your head a bit.
• At times the area, I imagine seeing as I have never been there, is a bit like Malaga.  First afternoon I got here there was a rather overweight cockney guy covered in tattoos off his face (3pm) dancing around, shouting and generally making everyone wish that he would be taken away somewhere.  Alas that didn’t happen and for whatever reason he decided to take someones glasses off their head and stamp on them on what I imagine was a display of primeval superiority……when I went back 4 hours later his head was slumped on a table asleep.
• It’s so clean!  Even the backpacker ghetto is fairly spic and span, compared to India this place is almost like an operating theatre.
• No car horns!  That is one thing that I am not sad to see the back of in India.  You can go down the street without fear of popping your eardrum as some stupidly loud car horn decides to let loose for no reason just as he drives by you.

Now all of the above taken into account, I still quite like the place.  I think a lot of what I am ‘seeing’ is a result of being in a very busy but relatively quiet and certainly sober country for the past couple of months.  Publuic drunkeness for the most part is a non entitiy in India, suddenly seeing it in all its’ glory came as a bit of a shock.

Still I will obviously persavere and am sure that most of what I am seeing is exaggerated in my head.  From what I have seen of Bangkok it is a great city…although I can’t find a waterproof case for my camera for love nor money…and I look forward to seeing more of it.

Will probably go diving for a couple of weeks in a few days before heading up north.  Not sure but will see what the next 2 or 3 days bring.

Peace and Love to you all

xx