Thailand

Having spent 3 months in SE Asia, mostly moving on every few days, we had not carried too much more than we needed - which meant that we did not have any warm clothes, not even a pair of jeans and a jumper to wear on the plane!

So, we met back up with our sweet swedish friends from Laos, Henrik and Sofia, and it was nice to spend our last day with them - and they needed to shop too!

It had been our intention all along to shop in Bangkok and sort our winter wardrobes out, but a nasty tummy bug, causing both of us to want to stay within metres of a toilet (and a reasonable one at that) put our plans out a bit, and we spent just a few hours traulling around a kind of shopping centre where all the shops were close together and the walkways were narrow, and the shops all looked the same and - did I just come from there? Or there? Did we say we were going to meet on this floor? Outside? Where we came in? Where did we come in...?

And we ended up with some alright clothes, and a supply of toiletries, etc to last us a good couple of months in England, so by the time we need to spend pounds, we'll have earnt them!

Our flight from Thailand to England was via Germany, where we got delayed due to London fog. We spent an extra few hours there, and spent Euros on beer and spent a delerious state making international calls and texting people.

Eventually we made it to London

SEE OUR FINAL SE ASIA PHOTOS AT http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Farewell%20SE%20Asia/?start=all

We were ready for the next installment of our adventure, having spent the past few days surrounded by Brits, so we were excited, more than sad, to be moving on from our island paradise.

We journeyed back, with one of those Brits - Ade - to the Krabi Province, this time to the Town of Krab, where we decided to take advantage of our afternoon and see a the "Tiger Cave" a temple where a single monk has as many shrines to himself as to Buddha in the temple. The temple is in the side of a mountain, and there is a cave inside it which looks like a tiger or a tiger's paw or something... We went in to have a look, but if there was a tiger-something there, but we couldn't make it out.

There were loads of monkeys at the base of the mountain, and there was a very tall staircase, leading up to a giant buddha at the top. There were a few buddhas up there, actually, and on the way up there was a terrific statue that looked a bit like a Buddha-Santa-Tarzan cross.

What was amazing actually, were some beetles and moths that we found at the top of the mountain.

OUR PHOTOS ARE AT http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Krabi/?start=all

And those stairs, if you go there, suck, they're a killer.

This really was our time of rest. Ten days of staying on a secluded beach - Ao Toh Ko - on the far side of Phi Phi Island, away from the very very crowded and very popular town beaches.

Now, this place was excellent because:

- IT WAS A SECLUDED BEACH
- We had a bungalow on the water - and it was cheaper than a grotty room in a big ugly building in town!
- The water was spectacularly clear, a beautiful surprise after our time at Railey
- We went snorkelling nearly every day
- The woman who owned the bungalows and the restaurant (which had WONDERFUL food), Pohn, was gorgeous, friendly and an absolute scream
- We met Gabrielle, a paramedic and anaesthetist from Switzerland who is terrific fun, and keen for swimming and snorkelling, and harrowing uphill hikes through the jungle
- We also met Mark and Krista, from Canada, who had been travelling NZ and SE Asia for 15 months, who are awesome musicians, and who are keen to plan our driving route in Canada in August
- Will and Ali came and met us there!
- and we also met Ade, Andy, Marie, and Fraser
- We went into town and watched Thai boxing in a pub where we could volunteer to participate, and it took some real convincing for Justin to stay out of the ring.

Apart from our one night out for Thai boxing, there is not a lot else to write about because we spent our time reading books, swimming in the ocean, eating, snorkelling, watching crabs, and hiking through the jungle!

SEE OUR PHOTOS (INCUDING UNDERWATER PHOTOS!) AT http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Phi%20Phi%20Island/?start=all

It’s funny what we have come to view as expensive. Our room at Ya Ya Resort is600Baht per night (in BKK we paid 400, Lopburi 160, and Chiang Mai 250) and a big breakfast here, including fruit, toast, eggs, sausage (or mushroom!) coffee and fruit juice is 160THB. At the end of Railay East it’s 100THB and on Railay West its 200THB. When you consider however, that 100Baht = US$2.50, a big breakfast at double the cost is still not “expensive”. Yet, for the past 5 weeks or so we have been paying US$3-7, so we found ourselves asking eachother “Is 600 ok with you? It is a lot of money…” Unbelievable! The UK is going to kill us!!!

This is sadly last leg, but is also the exciting, and relaxing “holiday” part of our SE Asia adventure – the best way we can think of to bring this chapter to a close.

So anyway, back in the real world (What’s that again!?) we have spent the past 5 days staying at a resort on Railay Beach, a headland between Krabi and Ao Nang, where we have lazed about on the beach (where there are a number of monkeys(!) who in comparison with those at Lopburi, are very well mannered!) eating pineapples, and have been swimming and snorkelling and kayaking in the beautiful, clear, warm sea… We are so lucky!

SEE PHOTOS OF RAILAY AT http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Railey/?start=all

Tomorrow morning we are going to get the ferry to Phi Phi Island, where we have heard really mixed reviews. Being peak season, we have booked ahead, and hopefully found the right spot – its on a (supposedly) reasonably secluded beach, and we have a beach bungalow there – also for 600Baht! YESSSS!

It is amazing to be back in Bangkok, time has just gone so quickly – we’ll have jobs soon (gulp!)!

We met back up with Will and Ali and showed them photos of monkeys (hundreds more than we posted!) until they felt upset, and then we saw some of Bangkok!

PHOTOS AT http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Back%20in%20Bangkok/?start=all

We had quite a definite plan for Bangkok – shopping. That was all we really wanted to do: find some warm clothes for an English winter, small speakers for computer/iPod; find a waterproof case for the camera, a guitar, maybe a firestick, see what options there were for a new computer, look at other completely unnecessary electronic gadgets that we might “need”, along with toiletries and stationary shopping, and anything else that might be a quarter of the price here compared to the UK…

But we spent a long time looking and not a lot of time buying! We did however, buy a guitar, and we did meet back up with Will and Ali for a couple of days, and might see them down south too!

So now we are heading for the island beaches of south Thailand! We fly in to Krabi today, and out again on the 19th, and have a loose plan of staying somewhere around Krabi, and Koh Phi Phi and maybe somewhere off Phuket… Who knows!? We will have a day and a half back in Bangkok before we fly to England, so we will buy the other necessaries then…

The only reason that we came to Lopburi, and the reason we carried on with our struggle to make it here, is because there are hundreds – maybe thousands – of monkeys. They’re everywhere. On everything – it’s crazy! They steal things from moving cars, they pull the protective insulation off the powerlines, they swing from shopfronts and they bully people for their lunch! Remember the movie Gremlins? When they’re everywhere? Destructive and mischievous… its just like that, but they’re macaques! And Justin fed them, and let them crawl all over him (and wasn’t he itchy later!?) Its incredible that we never heard of this place before coming to Thailand!

There is far more to see, than say, so that you can believe it. The photos don’t even do it justice, but GO TO http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Monkeys/?start=all TO SEE PHOTOS!

PS: we have only published a tenth of the photos we took...

After an inspiring but exhausting day with the elephants, we climbed onto the night train from Hell.

As we didn’t have a sleeper ticket, we were on high-backed bench seats in a carriage that had windows that were half-glass half-grill to ensure that adequate ventilation was maintained, and had a toilet at each end – neither of which had toilet paper, running water or anywhere to store what went in it – it all went onto the tracks.

Normally this would cause us no concern, as the train was leaving at 9:30pm and arriving at 9:30am, so we would sleep in between. However, the train was freezing, absolutely freezing. We each wore two to three layers of clothing (however light the clothing was), and wrapped ourselves in sarongs and leant against eachother, and could still barely sleep for the cold! Then at about 5am when we woke up, we came to realise that the train had been stopped for almost 2 hours, and that there had been some kind of accident. At 8am the train started up again, and 20min later, stopped again.

First we were advised that the train would carry on at 10am. Then 11. Then 1-1:30, then at 2pm.

Those train toilets, and half-windows that would not have otherwise bothered us, had become upsetting.

At 2:20, after being informed by a local tuk-tuk driver that the train was likely to sit right there overnight, we went with 5 others to get a taxi. They were going to Bangkok airport, so as to make their flights. As we were headed to Lopburi, and the fastest route to the airport did not go through Lopburi, we decided to go with them until Ayuthaya, and then get out and get a bus.

This became quite an expensive affair, as we paid 6x the cost of our train tickets for the taxi journey, then paid a quarter of the cost of our train tickets for the bus from Ayuthaya, to arrive in Lopburi at 9:30pm, instead of 9:30am! And right after we checked into our hotel, two girls that had been on our train, and stayed on it, checked in.

SEE PHOTOS AT http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Hell%20Train/

Please view their website: http://www.elephantnaturepark.org

Elephant Nature Park is a sanctuary for elephants, set up as an exemplary elephant tourism alternative to elephant camps or begging elephants.

Elephant Camps are surprisingly common, and popular amongst tourists. These are places where elephants give rides and perform tricks like dancing or painting. Assumingly, most tourists do not give any thought as to how these elephants come to learn these tricks, and what being “broken” means, so that the elephant is able to “work”.

Elephant Nature Park is run by an incredible woman named Lek, a Thai woman who grew up in a local village where elephants are used for work, and are “broken” so as to be able to perform that work. She has volunteers supporting her, and one of those volunteers – an Australian woman named Michelle – went there for a 2-week volunteer trip with her husband in 2002, and has only returned to Australia in that time to pack up her gear and collect her dog. They live there now, spending their days talking to tourists about elephants and promoting elephant well-being! What a job!!!

We fed elephants, got in the river with them and scrubbed them, watched babies play… it was a really amazing day! And we took about 500 photos!

TO SEE MANY PHOTOS, GO TO: http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Elephants/?start=all

They kicked us out! We can’t believe it!! We have to leave tomorrow because they said there was no room for us, and that someone else had booked ahead for a room and one of their tours! …and the real reason we were kicked out was because we had not bought one of their tours!! And they hadn’t even asked us! So our stay in Chiang Mai was going to be a day or two shorter than planned, and we are booked on the overnight train (even though we couldn’t get a sleeper!!) for tomorrow, after we have spent the day at Elephant Nature Park, a sanctuary for elephants, where we can see elephants being elephants – a tourism alternative to “Elephant Camps”.

It’s a bit of a shame to be leaving earlier than expected, as we were planning to look around at the night markets (which in Chiang Mai, especially on a Sunday are HUGE) to see if we could buy some cheap warm clothes for our trip to England, but its good to be heading to Lop Buri.

Anyway, it’s funny being back in a real city, in a world that has Starbucks and McDonalds.

SEE OUR FEW CHIANG MAI PHOTOS AT http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q164/erinfearn/SE%20Asia/Chiang%20Mai/

SEE PHOTOS AT http://web.mac.com/erinfearn/iWeb/SE%20Asia/Kanchanaburi.html

1. War memorial cemetery where hundreds of POWs were buried

2. War museum and Bridge over River Kwae


3. Waterfall

4. Lunch on the river

5. Tiger Temple

and there were lots of other animals at the temple…!

SEE PHOTOS AT http://web.mac.com/erinfearn/iWeb/SE%20Asia/Sydney%20to%20Bangkok.html

We had every intention of spending our first day just relaxing - avoiding stimulation, not going out, and nurturing ourselves in preparation for a great adventure.

As soon as we finished breakfast however, we decided to just have a bit of a look...

So our adventure begins in Bangkok, in Mo Chit (moor shit), where catch a train to Siam Square and meet a friendly tuk-tuk driver who gives us a “special discount” and charges us about 10x the usual rate to run us about the local neighbourhood.

First we were taken to the “Government Tourist Information,” where we spent an hour, and a fortune paying for Cambodian Visas, Coach tickets to Siem Reap (after being convinced that although the trip would be a little longer, and more expensive than the train and taxi we had anticipated, it would be far more convenient and comfortable with air conditioning, an on-board toilet and movies along the way), a booking at a different hotel for the following night (as we would have to wait in Bangkok an extra day because our Cambodian visas were going to take 24 hours and the coach to Siem Reap we were now booked on would not come all the way out to Mo Chit to collect us), and a day tour to Kanchanaburi (so that we would have something exciting planned for the extra day in Bangkok).

Next our friendly driver took us to a “cheap factory souvenirs” store where we could buy “suits and souvenirs”, despite our insistence that we would not buy anything - “please look – you like, you buy, you not like you not buy”

And then we went to see “Lucky Buddha,” where the solemn man inside the building that housed Buddha had some limited English language skills, which included “F*** off”, though he said that to someone who spoke neither English nor Thai.

After our driver explained that each time we went and looked around one of his sponsoring stores for about 10 minutes he would receive a litre of free fuel, we visited another couple.

And finally we were taken to the “Grand Palace”.