Bangkok and the Islands

We spent a very hot few days in a stuffy but cheap room in Bangkok. We spent a day looking around the city and the royal palace. We had to pay for trousers to wear though as shorts weren't acceptable, they didn't make for a particularly good look but we certainly weren't the only ones wearing them! We spent a couple of hours walking around the different temples and then went to little India to have lunch. That night we went to watch Mai Thai boxing, ended up paying about £35 to sit ringside. We had a really good evening and it was worth paying the extra to see all the action up close, although it is a brutal sport. We met an american girl there and the 4 of us went out on Kho San Road that night. Took us a while to get going the next day after our night out so we didn't get a huge amount done. We did take a boat ride around in the evening though to see the city at night. We paid about £20 on it between us and none of us were too impressed with it, but it was quite relaxing for an hour. From Bangkok we got a bus to Katchanaburi which is where the bridge over the river Kwai is. We only spent a fwe hours in the town but it was a very imformative time. The Japanese forced thousands of prisoners of war and immigrant labourers to build a railway from Burma down to Singapore. 16'000 prisoners of war died building the railway along with 100'000 labourers. We had a walk across the bridge and back which was a little odd in itself, walking along a railway line that still has trains using it! We also went to the cemetry for the POW's that died building the railway, they were buried in the jungle but the bodies were moved and identified after the war. From there we got an overnight train down to Surat Thani to get a boat over to Koh Samui. We only spent the one night on Koh Samui, none of us were too impressed with it though so we got the boat across to Koh Phangan. This is the Island where they have the full moon parties on the beach but unfortunately we weren't there at full moon. Its a really nice island though, with a very nice beach. We stayed for 2 days. All these Islands were on the Eastern side of thailand, it took us a full day to travel from Koh Phangan to Koh Phi Phi on the Western side. We didn't stay too long on Phi Phi because we were all running low on cash and didn't really want to go to the cash machine and incur the charges just for a small amount. We had a cheap night out because people were handing out flyers for free drinks in the evening. The next day we hiked up to the view point to look back down on the beaches. The viewpoint wasn't very high but it was a very hot and sweaty climb to get there, definately worth it though, we had spectacular views. The morning after that we got a boat back to the mainland and then a minibus to Panang on the West coast of Malaysia, breezed through the border with no problems and got a 90 day stamp for free, although were only there for about 10 days!

4.5 months and finally we've been robbed!

It nowhere near as dramatic as it might seem though, there was no desperate struggle in a dodgy Bangkok backstreet or anything like that, Colm and I just got a little careless on the bus! But I'll tell the story in order. We got the boat across the Mekong to Thailand, my first border crossing by boat, it only took a few minutes and it was all done. Free Thai visa for 15 days aswell which was nice. From the border we took a minibus to Chiang Mai in the north of thailand. We got to Chiang Mai and decided to have a nice productive few days. The evening we arrived we got dinner and then went to a travel agents and booked two things, we decided on a days cooking course which was something I'd been wanting to do since I left home and for one reason or another we just never got round to it. For the second day we booked a trek to see a waterfall which also involved elephant riding and also a ride on a bamboo raft. We also went to see some minority villages but we've done this quite a few times in different places so that wasn't too exciting. Anyway, first day first, we set off to do our cooking course, none of us really knew what to expect from it really. It cost us about 15 pounds and was well worth the money. The first thing they did was get us to choose the 5 things that we wanted to cook and then they took us to the market to buy the ingredients for the dishes. The 3 of us were with a small group of people on an intrepid tour of thailand for 2 weeks. I chose to cook chicken and cashew nuts, Chiang Mai noodles with red curry paste, mango sticky rice and a coconut curry. We spent all day cooking the different things, and obviously once you've cooked it you've got to eat it aswell, we were all stuffed by the end of the day. The following day was an early start and we all pretty much went back to sleep in the bus that took us to the trek. The first thing on the itinery was the elephant trekking. We were on them for about an hour and I don't think I'd have wanted to be on for much longer than that, it was quite uncomfortable but really cool at the same time. They weren't as big as I expected them to be but Asian elephants are supposed to be quite a bit smaller than their African cousins. Colm was put on quite a cheeky little elephant, ended up spraying people on the backs of other elephants when we got to the water. After the elpehants the bus took us to a minority village where they tried and failed to sell us their handicrafts. Then from there it was the trek itself, 40mins later and we were at our destination. wasn't the hardest trek we've ever done. We messed about in the waterfall we'd reached though, no rope swings this time, it was quite shallow which meant it had some power behind it and it became a bit of a challenge for us to get to the fall. After this we were taken for lunch and then it was onto the bamboo rafting. We half jokingly told our guide that we wanted to do the rafting on our own without the guide to steer the boat and we were somewhat suprised when we got to the river and they sent the 3 of us off with a pole on our own. It was fairly easy on the slow parts of the river, you use the pole to punt along and also to push the front from side to side, the back just sort of follws the front. The rapids we went down however were a little trickier, some of them were easy enough but both Kris and I managed to bounce off a rock or 2 a few times! We got to the end of the river and that was our day done, we were dropped off back at Chiang Mai, we had a bus booked to get to Bangkok and we were being picked up by the taxi 15 minutes after we were dropped off by our trek bus so we made use of the first McDonalds we'd seen since China and ran back to the guesthouse. The taxi turned up just as we finished eating. We got to the bus and were pleasantly suprised, had plent of leg room, comfortable chairs and blankets provided, couple of films were played aswell rather then the usual karaoke rubbish. We got to Bangkok at 6am and went to sleep for a few hours. When we woke up Colm realised that he had $50 missing from his bag, I checked mine and I was down $65. The only place we can think of it going missing was when we were on the bus and the bags were down in the luggage hold. The way the money was hidden in our bags suggests that someone was sat down there going through all the bags on the off chance. We probably weren't the only people who had a problem and it has taught us a bit of a lesson and nothing important was taken so its not all so bad. Will talk about Bangkok and the Bridge over the river Kwai in the next blog!

Talk to you all soon

Paul, Colm and Kris

Laos...

Had a relatively straight forward run up to the 4000 islands from the Laos/Cambodia border. We stayed on an island called Don Det in the middle of the Mekong river, spent about 10 mins in a boat threading our way through other, smaller islands and got off on the beach at Don Det. Its a pretty small island, about 1.5x0.5km and all the accommodation was in bungalows. We found one with 3 single beds in it for 75'000kip, which is about $9. We had all sorts of grand plans of renting kayaks and renting bikes but unfortunately Rob was right, the island is just too good a place for relaxing and doing very little so thats pretty much what we did, we met a couple called Rich and Sue from Crawley and we ended up spending most of our 4 evenings with them. We finally dragged ourselves away from all the relaxation and booked a boat and then a bus up to a place Champasak about 3 hours North, in the end we kind of wished we hadn't. We got up early, got the boat back to the mainland and then got in the 'VIP bus', basically an oversized tuk tuk with bench seats and about 15 people in it. It wasn't to bad, we got there, or so we thought, we asked at someone and it turned out we were about 12km from Champasak. The plan was to go to Champasak and see a temple and then get the night bus to Vientienne. We flagged down an articulated lorry carrying wood and he said he take us as far as the river. I sat in the cab while Colm and Kris had to stand behind the cab, don't think they minded though! We got to the Mekong, again..., paid to get across to Champasak and then walked 2km toward town in sweltering heat, after the 2km we decided to stop at a guest house and have a drink. We left our bags with them and walked the rest of the way into town to go to an cash machine, we were all running low on money, but the cash machine was closed for some reason! By now we were all pretty fed up and then we were told that the busses to Vientienne only left from Pakse, so we decided to cut our losses and got a tuk tuk the rest of the way to Pakse, got there by about 4pm and by 8pm we were on the night bus to Vientienne. Found ourselves a room with 3 beds in for $18, more than we wanted to pay but it did have a TV which meant we could watch the final of the Melbourne Open. The next day we did a walking tour that was in the lonely planet, it was supposed to take 4-6 hours, we managed it in 1, dont think our hearts were in it really. The following day we got the local bus for 4 hours up to Vang Vieng. We spent 3 nights there before we managed to get it together and go up the river for a spot of tubing. Had a really good time and drank far to much as you can probably see from the pictures. We all ended up with a few cuts and bruises from the river and I needed a new pair of flip flops when I ended up with 2 right feet ones at the end of the night (think that pair number 5 now). After that we spent 6 hours on the bus going from Vang Vieng up to Luang Prabang. When we got there we realised we were only going to be in the country for a few more days so we had to start rationing ourselves so that we wouldn't have to go to the cash machine again and its not a partiuarly cheap place to stay. We managed it though, went to visit a waterfall which was really cool, they have loads of asiatic bears that they've rescued from poachers who keep them for they're bile which is used in Chinese traditional medicine, they seemed really well looked after. The water fall was really nice, I haven't ever seen water that was that colour before, we spent an hour or so walking around it and climbing to the top and then after that we went for a swim, the water was freezing! It was good though, did the rope swing and jumped off the waterfall. If you left your feet in the water there were little fish that come and nibble at them, that was quite a wierd sensation. The day after the waterfall we had a day walking around Luang Prabang (see the buddha for each day pictures) and that evening it was a seater bus over night to the Laos Thailand border.

About to leave Laos, time to write about Cambodia!

We left Siem Reap to head for Kratie to find Rob and some dolphins, we were successful on both fronts! We expected the bus to Kratie to be nice and straight forward and to start with it was, got on your average Cambodian coach, nothing special but nothing out of the ordinary. Spent 6 hours on it going to Kom Pong Cham, when we got there they told us we had to get off the nice big bus and get into a Toyota Camry (The Cambodians favourite car, they all have them). Again we thought this wasn't really a problem until they told us how many people were going to be in this saloon car. They put 8 of us in it, 4 in the back, 2 on the passenger chair and 2 on the drivers chair. It was an interesting 3 hours but as everyone keeps saying, its all about the journey and we survived the journey so it wasn't to bad. Got to Kratie in the afternoon and thought rather than just sit around we'd get on and go and see the dolphins the same day. Got a tuk tuk for 30mins out to the place on the Mekong river with the dolphins. Luckily we went past Rob and Mao on their motorbike on the way so they followed us, we had a quick reunion and then Colm, Kris and I went out onto river to spot the illusive dolphins. They're not so illusive, we saw loads of them, and they breathe out when they get to the surface so their even telling you where they are, even so, as you'll see from the pictures, they are extremely difficult to get a decent picture of. But we did get to see them so it was mission accomplished. That night was our last night with Rob, we all had a romantic candlelit dinner because the whole town was out of power. The next morning we all met up for breakfast again and then Rob and Mao left South for Kom Pong Cham again and we headed North East to Bang Lung. The journey up to Bang Lung was another bone rattling one in a minibus but as we went on a few people got out and we ended up with a reasonable amount of space. Bang Lung (in Ratanakiri province) seemed to have very little going for it when we first got there, our bags were absolutely caked in dust from the road when we got there. The following day we got on a push bike each and cycled out to what we thought was a volcanic crater lake but some people have told us it was a meteor crater lake, we're still not sure which it was but we had a great time there, it was a pretty much a perfect circle of really nice water. People have built platforms around the lake aswell, we managed to find one of these to ourselves and proceeded to spend a good few hours swimming about, jumping in off the platforms (hopefully the video's worked the other day) and chatting on the deck. That afternoon we cycled the other way back through town and went to a couple of waterfalls. They were both pretty nice and again we pretty much had them to ourselves but we did all sort of wish we'd spent the whole day at the crater lake.The next day was another bumpy ride in a minivan to Stung Treng and then from there another minivan up to the Cambodia/Laos border. Got across with no drama's and from there it was off to Don Det in the 4000 Islands (South Laos).