Destination: London!

Well I arrived in London!

Currently I'm looking for a place to live. I'm staying at Charlotte's at the moment which is lovely, but I'm a little scared of Brixton so am looking for somewhere in Clapham, where Keryn and Romana will be living.

So to backtrack a couple of days...

We arrived in Heathrow Airport on Monday night. Customs was a breeze and we picked up our luggage and I was met by Charlotte at the gates! It was so good to see her. We waited around for the girls friends to come to meet them at the airport and then we all headed off to our different homes for the next few days. I had my first ride on the tube which wasn't scary at all.

On Tuesday I met the girls and went to our 1st contact meeting which was great. They set up our bank accounts with HSBC, gave us a sim card and told us heaps of useful info. We had a little wander around the streets near the Tottenham Court Road tube station (which is near Oxford St) and got a sandwich from Marks & Spencers which is awesome. I was so so tired that day so went home to meet Charlotte and just crashed.

Wednesday was a little better, we went back to 1st Contact to set ourselves up with Limited Companies to work under, so that we pay less tax and get more pay in our hand each week :-)
I then met up with Charlotte to have a wander around Oxford St. I went to Topshop (OMG... It is HUGE!! I love it!! I'm so going back there to shop my guts out. I cannot wait.) Topshop in Oxford St has 4 floors, it has a vintage section and a Roller disco at the bottom!! So funny. Can't wait till I'm earning pounds and clothes will seem cheaper.

We walked around the shops on Oxford St and then we wandered down to Leicester Square, some famous people must have been coming for a movie premier because there was crowds of people around a fenced area and they were laying down some red carpet. I went to look at a flat night which was horrible! I have more to look at today.

Ladyboys, ping pong & Jenga

"No I don't want a f**ing tuk-tuk, suit or massage, thank you" - I would like to buy this shirt, except I'll never use it once I get to London :-P

Phuket is growing on me but is still not my favourite place. Yesterday we did some shopping - not bad shopping but its almost not worth the hassle that we have got on the streets. Some of the street vendors have been incredible rude, pushy and obnoxious.

We layed in the sun for a few hours and I got quite burnt, I'm still red today. I look like a tourist!!

Last night was quite funny. We had a few drinks down in the lobby after dinner trying to get into the mood to go out. We had a few games of pool which took a long time seeing as we're all so bad at it, but we made a new friend - Michael from Adelaide, who beat us all at pool and tagged along with us for the night. After pool we decided to go out to find a ping pong show (after the recommendation from some middle aged tourists - they loved it!) It didn't take long, as soon as we headed to the nightlife strip we were approached to go see a ping pong show so we followed them down the street and entered a seedy little club in the shape of a long rectangle with a stage on one side lined with poles, and seats and tables on the other side. It was 'free entry' but we each had to buy a drink for $10 (which is really expensive in Thailand) but we figured you only do this kind of thing on special occasions ;-) It was quite funny actually. The girl lured us up on stage before the show to get some piccies with the poles (see my smugmug - now this wasnt my idea).

The show was 'interesting', the girl shot darts, blew a horn, shot bananas and ping pongs (I was a little disappointed coz they didn't exactly go shooting across the room).

After the show we went out to a street bar and got a couple of drinks, and played games with the Thai bar girls. Literally - we played Jenga, Connect 4 and played a game where you take it in turns to hammer a nail into a big chunk of wood with a really skinny head hammer... it was fun, something different anyway! The Thais like there games. But I was surprised, I was expecting them to ask for money after the games but they didn't, so maybe they just play to keep themselves entertained as well in the low season.

We headed on to the Aussie bar to watch the soccer but my energy was seriously waning so we went to Maccas and then home bed (after much whinging from romana who I think had too many red bulls and wanted to stay
up).

Today the sun is out again! We had a nice sleep-in, managed to get down to the restaurant just in time for brekky and have had a relax by the pool.

It will be a pretty uneventful day - just what I want!!

Phuket: Thai gold coast

We arrived in Phuket yesterday. We were greeted with pouring rain and strong winds - it's monsoon season! We were lucky in Samui to have got quite a bit of sun so it was very disappointing to get here in such bad weather, it didn't help my first impressions of Phuket - to me it looked like the gold coast (no offense to anyone who lives at the gold coast) but it just wasn't what I after, especially coming from the little tropical coconut island paradise of Ko Samui.

But it is growing on me. Keryn and I went for a wander in the rain and discovered that the shopping isn't half bad, there's a lot more variety here than Samui and slightly cheaper if you bargain well. Keryn and I were trying to pass the time (there's really not that much to do when it's raining) so we decided to pull up a stool in the lobby bar and drink! Vodka & red bull and Capiroskas (vodka & lime) are the special - only 60 baht!! ($2) so we had a few of those and cheered up a little, and had a few more and met some other Aussie girls at the bar as well. They gave us some tips on where and where not to go.

After a few drinks at the beach bar I headed to the net cafe and then couldn't keep my eyes open (drinking at 3pm does that to you) so went and fell into bed. We all had strange dreams and bad sleeps last night - it was kind of eery. The thoughts of the tsunami have been running through our minds and knowing that so many people died here (even in our hotel - which is right on the beach) is kind of creepy. Some of the street stalls have dvds of footage which you can buy and photos of the devastation.

I've noticed that the street vendors here are so much pushier than on Ko Smaui, they are rude to you and were putting on Aussie accents when we told them we're Australian. Although the rude ones actually seem to be more Indian rather than the Thais.

I've also noticed so many Aussies here! They are everywhere. It's weird - there's more Australians than any other nationality and there's heaps of Aussie bars as well. I think we might head out to the bar strip tonight to see what its all about.

Today was finally sunny!! We spent the entire morning sunbaking by the pool. I'm going to look black soon. I'm actually quite red at the moment! It was great though, just what we all wanted to do. We had a wander down to the shops in the afternoon and did a little shopping. The girls ate subway! pfft. I don't think it was that nice. I held off and got some noodles and oyster sauce with chicken back at the hotel restaurant and ate it by the pool.

We watched the most beautiful sunset over the water from the beach outside our hotel. I didn't realise the sun would set in such a perfect spot. I took lots of piccies... it was so.... picturesque!!

Now off for some Capiroskas... ;-)

Day 4 - Safari!

We went on a 4wd safari island tour today. It was brilliant. We were going to get scooters and go around the island ourselves but every single person who we've told that we're doing that has said "Ooooh, it's dangerous, I don't recommend it" so we decided to just go on a tour. It ended up being really fun.

We were picked up from the hotel in a jeep (which we sat in the back of and simply had to hold on for dear life or we'd slip off the back) and headed over for an elephant show. This was good but I did feel sad for the elephants being tied up and working.

We headed from here to the Grandfather and Grandmother rocks - which are named due to their looking like private parts. Another silly photo opportunity! haha.. We had a little wander, took some piccies then headed on our way.

Next stop - a waterfall. It was really nice, we had a big of a jungle walk to get to it (I think I'm losing weight!) and then sat around while some people in the group had a swim. We also got to see some rubber trees and how they get the rubber. They have little buckets at the bottom and they cut into the tree so that the sap all drips down into the buckets. After about 3 hours the bucket fills up and then they mix it with water and let it dry on a tray, then put it through things that look like big pasta makers to roll the sheets flat and thin. A lot of effort I reckon.

After the waterfall it was off to the Magic Buddha Gardens... This was really sweet, a very magical place indeed. It was green and mossy with little waterfalls and old stone statues and building. Apparently its a place where people meditate and they can sleep in the little stone huts if they stay the night. I'm not sure if they still do this, it might just be more of a tourist attraction now.

We ate lunch at a restaurant at the top of the mountain, with amazing views out over the island and the bay. After lunch, off we went for some real 4 wheel driving. We were all holding on for dear life, hoping that we wouldn't crack our heads on the bars down the side of the jeep. We went around dirt roads along the mountain ranges - it was pretty darn cool!! We had a great time. I was glad that we didn't go on scooters, something bad would have happened for sure! hehe... (it would have been fun though)

We headed down to the Big Buddha. This was big and gold and you can see it from the top of the mountain ranges. The island is actually a bit bigger than I thought it was, and there's so many coconut trees here! Ko Samui is also nicknamed "Coconut Island" - very appropriate. There's approximately 2 million coconut trees here.

The final stop was the monkey show. We were going to go for an elephant ride but there was a mixup between the tour agency and the safari guide so we didn't go on but ended up getting our money back. We saw a monkey show which was pretty lame, he pulled some coconuts out of a tree (the thais put the monkeys to work here gathering coconuts) and shook our hand.

Back home and off to find a nice place for dinner - more Thai food - yay!! :-)

Ko Samui - Day 2 - Around Chaweng again

We didn't do much at all today - during the day anyway.

Had brekky at 9am at the hotel, then spent some time at the beach. Mana and I did some internetting today, got some washing done and had a yummy lunch at the hotel again.

We actually spent quite a bit of time at the net cafe today. It takes a lot more time than I thought it would to update my blog and smugmug, probably because I spend half the time on MSN :-P But I want to do it regularly so I'm not in here for like 5 hours at a time trying to do it all at once. I'm being a nerd by spending so much time on the internet but I am enjoying the time here and usually I duck into the net cafe when the sun isn't out - right now it looks like a storm is brewing.

So anyway, for dinner we caught a sawngtheuw (don't know how to spell it) up to North Chaweng to Al's resort and found a really cute restaurant on the beach. There were banana lounges pushed together to make a platform, with cushions and a little table in the middle. It was really nice sitting physically on the beach. We had some $4 cocktails - Mana and I found one called the beach cocktail that was just as potent as a long island ice tea, but nicer. We all ordered pad thai, seeing as we were a little bit sick of curries!

After dinner we wandered up the beach to find the Ark Bar, which was more of the square platforms on the beach with cushions, and the place was full of backpackers with a big screen to watch the soccer. After being harassed by children either trying to sell necklaces (made of those foam balls that go in bean bags and flowers threaded onto string) or trying to play games of connect 4 (if you lose you pay them) we sat at a table and looked at the drinks list. Before we even ordered a drink an american backpacker was eyeing us off and came over to say hi. We ended up joining their table (3 aussies, an american and a thai girl) and ordering 'buckets' of vodka and red bull. Apparently it was the thing to do and when I looked around I noticed a lot of other tables were drinking from buckets. I think a bucket was 600 baht - $20. They were so strong. It tasted like 2/3 vodka and 1/3 red bull, and the red bull here isn't fizzy so it doesn't really disguise the vodka taste as much. So we drank some buckets and had little chats amongst ourselves about how these guys were all just out for a pull and then we had a little teary because we miss our boys. Mana and I tried to console ourselves by perving on the brazilian soccer team.
Some of the guys with animals came around - they have snakes, monkeys, big reptiles, eagles, and put it on you and then try to charge you to have your photo taken. We tried to take sneaky photos with our camera but I only ended up getting some pics of the american guy.

After Ark Bar we headed over to the Green Mango, which according to the other backpackers is the place to go. It was kind of cool, mostly just fun but a bit daggy. Interesting to say the least. It was a real party lane, just off the main street. The lane is lined with bars and clubs and was full of people spilling out onto the street and dancing around in the street. Here they don't care if you take drinks out to the street (I wandered around a supermarket drinking a corona in Bangkok). We went into the Green Mango bar/club and it was full of people - all different kinds of people. In the front area close to the street, top 40 type music was playing (from the last 5 years). In the back area where the strobe lights were going nuts, there was cheesy commercial dance, mostly from at least 3 years ago. Darude, Derilium, Benny Benassi etc... it was quite funny and we had a dance around being stupid for a while. We lost Keryn for a bit towards the end and it made me realise even more how much of a pain it is not having mobiles. Yesterday Mana and I had to get a van a couple of k's back to the hotel after a while in the net cafe because we thought she might be worried about where we were. So we found Keryn again and headed back to the hotel, trying desperately to find some food along the way to no avail. We ended up in the 7 Eleven, wandering around trying to find something that we might even consider eating - it took a while and we ended up settling with some 2 minute noodles, which were pretty gross but I ate mine. It had a real meat sachet which I opened and nearly threw up at the smell - obviously it ended up in the bin. Keryn ended up being pretty sick, I think from the buckets. We fell into bed at about 4.30am, just about the time everyone in Brisbane would be getting ready for work.

Ko Samui - Chaweng beach

We are now on Ko Samui. We arrived yesterday morning at 7am, had to get up ridiculously early at 3.30 am after 2 hours sleep to be at the airport by 5am. The flight was nice and quick, only and hour and they gave us breakky on the plane. From the plane we had to hop on a little open air bus type thing to get to the arrivals area and get our baggage. We got a mini van to Chaweng beach and it stopped at several hotels for us so we could decide which one we wanted to stay at. We chose the Chaweng Cove Resotel. We got a cute little bungalow beside the pool, really close to the beach. It has a cabana beach bar right on the beach in front of the pool. It's so cute.

First thing we did was to get changed and go for a swim at the beach! The water is warm and beautiful and its really shallow so you can go out pretty far. The beach is lined with banana lounges, each hotel provides them for their guests. We spent a few hours at the beach and pool and had a wander down the road. We ate lunch at the hotel - I had a noodle salad which was HOT but good. We spent a bit of time at the net cafe and then went to the cabana hut bar to drink for happy hour!! $2.60 cocktails - I was in heaven. We had about 4 or 5 then went for a wander down the beach and got lost in a ritzy resort trying to find our way back to the street. We got out to the street and its really cool at night! The place comes alive after dark.

The streets are lined with restaurants, bars and street markets & shops full of fake everything - bags, clothes, sunnies, watches, you name it. I bought a fake DKNY (I bartered him down to 600bht) but after getting back to the hotel realised its too big for me so I'm going to try and swap it tonight. We wandered down the street having drinks at a few bars and looking at all the shops and markets.

When we got back to the hotel I ordered 3 serves chicken satay sticks, but mana wanted to swap 1 serve of chicken sticks for 1 serve spring rolls. They obviously didn't understand because we ended up with 5 serves of chicken and 1 serve of spring rolls!! It was hilarious - we had so much food! We managed to eat it all though!

Kanchanaburi

Today we went to Kanchanaburi - it was a completely awesome day (apart from the amount of time we spent driving). Had an early start, got up at 7 and had a buffet breakky at the hotel. The breakfasts here aren't that great. None of the western food is quite the same and I still can't quite stomach thai food for brekky. The fruit isn't quite as flavoursome as in Oz but it's edible. At the buffets there is always a person cooking eggs, you just go up and ask them what you want. The coffee here is terrible, I have to put in lots of sugar, but the sachets of sugar are huge!

So after our breakfast we spent a little bit trying to arrange how to get to kanchanaburi. We thought it wouldn't cost that much and were going to get the bus ($3 each) but when we asked people where the Southern Bus Terminal was they had never heard of it. So we thought we'd just get a taxi. The taxi's here are so cheap. We ended up getting a lovely taxi driver (Saipet I think his name was) who drove us around the whole day (I'm talking close to 10 hours here) for 3000 baht - $100! Bargain! He took us first of all to the floating markets. I think he must have got a commission for taking us there because we didn't ask to go there and he kind of insisted on taking us. We thought, oh well, may as well it looks kind of cool.

So the floating markets were cool!! We got driven around these little canals around the markets for about an hour. The stalls are all either on little boats or by the side of the river. The boat driver stops at each one for you to look at what they have for sale. It was actually quite disappointing that most of the stalls sold the same thing - souvenir type handmade things. We bought a book of postcards, keryn got some wooden hand carved coloured pencils and I got these little wooden bookmarks with dolls on them. At the end of the boat trip I bought a plate with my photo on it and Floating markets written on it. I will post it home soon so I don't have to carry it in my backpack.

Next stop - Tiger Temple!! This was cool. We went in and wandered down this quite long dirt road until we found the tiger area. We went down and the staff held our hands and took us to sit with each tiger while they took photos of us with our own cameras. It was so cool. The tigers are so beautiful!! After we had our piccies taken we wandered around and looked at the other animals, there were a few deer, buffalo, horses (tiny ones) and really skinny cows. All the cows here look anorexic. Maybe that's why there's not much milk in Thailand.

I was almost passing out by the time we finished here as I was so hungry and it was so hot, so we got the taxi driver to take us to a 7 eleven and we got some food. I thought I'd try some asian stuff so I got a packet of coconut cream coated peanuts (which were tasteless), some honey-looking chips (which turned out to be fish-flavoured... vomit) and some salt & sour chips (I thought they'd be like salt & vinegar but they were gross) - ended up giving them all to the taxi driver. We all got a pork bun, which turned out to be custard inside hahaa...

Next stop - Bridge over the River Kwai. At the bridge here we decided to go on a boat trip. We hopped on another super-fast little boat and sped on down the river. We made 3 stops. First stop was a cave. It was quite cool. We hopped off the boat and climbed up this little track up the hill, through some markets in a little wooden walkway and at the top found a big gold buddha. Not that big in comparison to some here, but we're still go see the really big ones. So we took a piccie of us and the buddha and the river. The view was beautiful.

We wandered on down the path to the cave. There were signs along the way pointing us in the right direction. These were hilarious - they read "The way to see a cave" and "The way to enjoy with a cave" - you can see these in my smugmug. Once we got to the cave we had to pay a small admission fee but the guy gave us each a little friendship band which was cute. We went down into the cave, being escorted by two little thai boys - about 7 years old - eating their bowls of noodles for lunch! I was glad they were there showing us the way because the cave went down really deep and I started to get a bit unsure if we were supposed to go down that far! Some of the crevices we had to duck through were really small! There were buddhas around in the cave and little shrines. We were really puffed when we got back up out to the top again, and the little thai boy said to me "You - sit down over there" and pointed to some seats. hehe... We started to head back but the girls had to go to the toilet so we stopped into some really disgusting toilets, half of the cubicles had stray dogs asleep on the floor of them and most were really dirty. They had a basin full of water next to them and a bowl for you to scoop water out to flush the toilet - yuk!! See pic in my smugmug.

Next stop on the River Kwai boat tour was a monkey school! We hopped out and went up to see the monkeys. Most were on little leashes but the guy came up with a monkey and let us hold it - he put it on my shoulders and it held on to my head!! I shrieked because I wasn't expecting him to put it on my shoulders and 'rabies' was going through my head but Keryn had held it so I just let it sit on my shoulders while the girls took my photo. We didn't have time to see the whole show so went back to the boat and moved on to the War Cemetery.

The war cemetery was sad but interesting. There were hundreds of rows of graves of all the soldiers, and we wandered among them looking at how old all the men were. Lots of them were around 22, 23, 24, 25... so young! We signed the visitors book and headed back because we'd taken too much time and the taxi driver (bless him) was waiting for us. We got the taxi driver to take our photo on the famous bridge and then told him the destination was Bangkok! We were glad to be heading home as it was such a long day, and all groaned when he said to get comfy because the trip back would be at least an hour due to peak hour traffic.

That's something worth mentioning here - I thought Brisbane traffic was bad. Bangkok traffic is a nightmare. The traffic lights once they turn red stay red for about 5 whole minutes. Next to the traffic light is a counter counting down the seconds until the light will turn green again. On the way back it rained for the first time.

When we got back we went straight down to the net cafe which was quite useless as it was so slow. Most of the ones we've been to have been really slow and in Thai which is a bit difficult.

For dinner we went to an authentic Thai restaurant near the hotel - The Sukhothai. We ordered dacquiris and Mana and I got green curry and Keryn got a red curry. I thought I really should try an authentic green curry. Holy mother of god it was hot. We all had steam coming out of our ears. I ordered 3 extra serves of rice and milkshakes. It was quite funny though.

Keryn and I then went to a net cafe - it was a gaming one full of thai nerds fragging it up for the night. We uploaded some pics, sent some emails and blogged a little then went to bed as we had to get up in 3 hours for the plane to Ko Samui. What a day!!

Bangkok

My first blog overseas!!

I'm in Bangkok in IT city.. near Siam at the moment. We're in a net cafe trying to suss out how to use our atm cards here! Having troubles.

It's pretty amazing here, so dirty! But there's been some cool stuff. I'm trying to remember it all. We just had thai lunch from a buffet thing for $1 and we've buying 3 water bottles at a time for about 18 baht all together, thats about 60 cents!!

This morning we were scared of eating thai food for brekky so went to Starbucks, at least we knew what we were getting! The girls ordered sausage rolls, which were actually sausages in pastry! hehe... then we wandered down to Sukhumvit Rd (it took us a while to realise where we were and what direction to even walk in) and have been getting the sky train around all day. On the Skytrain there's signs that say that you must stand up to let a monk sit down! We've only seen 1 monk so far. We went to MBK a big shopping centre and looked around at all the fake stuff but didn't buy anything... as romana said, we just weren't feeling the love there! Romana is trying to buy a camera but the money situation is an issue.

We had the loveliest taxi driver from the airport yesterday and the ride was a lot shorter than I expected and was about 400bht. The hotel room is nice, its taking a bit of getting used to not using the tap water. The flight was good but a bit long, but the food wasn't bad.. choo chee fish curry and then chicken noodles! I didn't have room in my backpack to take the pillow and blanket :-( We're quite overwhelmed by bangkok, just getting lunch was a bit of an effort, we stood in the line for a while before we realised that we needed food tickets, and to work out how much it cost until we saw the little english translation. We learnt a few thai expressions but haven't really used them. Cheeky Thai boys have been waving at us and talking to us!

There's taxi scooters all around the place you just hop on the back! And lots of girls sit side saddle on the back... Lots has happened, I'm trying hard to remember it all! I've taken lots of photos. And there's 'taxi-meter's everywhere, bright pink ones! And lots of tuk-tuks but we haven't ridden in one yet.

Gav, we're in IT city at the moment and there's loads of games and dvds! And PSP's are about 350 for the packages I think... I was thinking about getting an mp3 player but I'm suss on the fake ones and the real ones don't seem that cheap. I bought a USB key - 1Gb for $33!

After IT city we had a wander down the street and found another shopping mall, this one had slightly better stuff, had some really yummy Mr Bun's and Keryn and I both bought cute tops. We were buggered so we walked back to the Sky train and then got a tuktuk back to the hotel.

For dinner we went to the Banyan Tree Hotel restaurant on the 52nd floor. The restaurant is called Exotic Saffron. It was breathtaking. The view was so amazing. We sat outside on a clear table and chairs on a floor that had running water underneath it - very cool. The food was awesome. We also got cocktails, cosmopolitan and an "Eager Ninja" with Sake in it. We had some mixed appetizers - yummo! And I thought I'd be adventurous and I got a grilled giant tiger prawn dish which was really nice but a bit difficult to get out of the shell (I really don't like touching things with legs and heads). We were pretty buggered after a really long day with lots of walking so went back to the hotel after dinner and hit the hay!

Lots of love to everyone!!! Miss you all... it's still a bit surreal! Bangkok is huge and we still don't really know where we're going. It is fun though! Lots of love!! xoxoxxx

T minus 4 sleeps

As the title suggests, 4 sleeps!!

Our going away party was last weekend and it was a blast!! Thanks to everyone who came along and made it such a special night.

Things are coming along very nicely, I'm just about all organised! Well apart from selling my car, doing my resume and umm.. packing my bags. I still have to choose what clothes to take.

But I have bought everything I need, got all my medications, even got my pounds and baht! Gav and I are going somewhere special tomorrow, which only leaves 2 days left in Oz!

The next time I write could be in Thailand... oooooooooooohh..