London town

As you will guess from the title we have safely landed in the old world (as a vampire from Anne Rice's novels would say). We were very kindly met in the airport by my cousin Zoya (who had to get up at 5:30AM! - the dedication!) and went to her and Julia's place on the tube. And yes it is actually a tube and if you're not careful you may end up with a removal of your scalp by the doors.

Some final words on wonderful Thailand before I proceed on UK experiences so far...

Full Moon Party
The island of Koh Phangan hosts a beach dance party every full moon... it started in 1988 and they've been getting bigger ever since... according to the Lonely Planet they collect 30000 travellers in a high season... impressive. The party is held in a different part of the island from where we were staying and hence we had a nice long ride in the back of a taxi over some steep and bouncy bits (later this particular aspect of a journey will become rather painful... but on that later). We got there around 5PM and decided to have some dinner and pre-dancing drinks. Reading in our little guide book that The Outback Bar does some good steak (a craving that had to be satisfied) we went there. The bar was pretty cool - very laid back and busy as expected. Looking through the beer selection we settled on a pint of Guinness each (VB or Fosters did not appeal so much for some reason). As we were eating the TV program running was Jackass which made digestion a little uncomfortable, but we managed.

Throughout the night we got to meet quite a few fellow travellers. One was a bunch of Austrian boys one of whom was a professional soccer player and was built (using Jack's term) like a 'brick sh!thouse'... this however, didn't stop my husband from drinking this big muscle machine under the table, which was VERY amuzing. Later that night we met two other guys - Charles from Sydney and John (half german, half english... ouch). After a few more pints and quite a few lebanese jokes (Charles is leb) the four of us decided that it was time to actually discover what this Full Moon Party is actually about and we went to see what's happening on the beach. On the way there I picked up a bucket (it is literally a small (1 lt) bucket that comes in a colour of your choice... I picked green - BAD, BAD choice... that comes with a small bottle of spirit - I, of course, picked vodka... Red Bull - which I stayed away from... and Coke - which I had two cans of). Armed with this weapon of mass destruction I proceeded to pick up three glow-in-the-dark bracelets to get into the whole techno dancing mood.

On our way to the beach Jack decided that it would be a wise idea to arm wrestle a British sheep farmer in the gutter... the sheep farmer being a farmer and all came out to be slightly stronger but was very cheery and picked up the mood of the night. As we got to the beach it so happened that on this particular full moon the tide was so high that there was no real beach to party on... so there was NO full moon party... which meant we had to proceed to stand on the street talking to other travellers - one of whom was this very nice Canadian guy Terry (see pic.). By this stage of the night the bucket (and the dubious alcohol in it) decided to say hello to the world and we had to leave in a hurry to spend a few moment in the gutter, after which I wasn't really in shape to go back to talking and drinking and we caught a taxi home. I must say that the whole sitting in the back of a ute when you're VERY green, bouncing around and going over VERY hilly road is not the best feeling in the world. The next day we must have emptied the place where we were staying of eggs and bacon but it was all worth it!

4x4
After spending almost two weeks on the island and not seeing all that much we hired a four-wheel drive for a day and went around the island. Our car - the "all powerful" Suzuki-something actually performed very well and holding onto both handles inside (one of which as I discovered is called 'Jesus') we spent the day discovering the beauties of waterfalls, VERY bouncy dirt roads and elephants... there's a place on Koh Phangan where you can ride an elephant into the jungle and you can also feed them bananas for 20 baht. So I got to feed this cute 2 year old baby elephant who LOVED bananas and after his meal was made perform tricks for me and had a huge erection. All in all it was very very cool and I decided that if we ever have a house I'll have a baby elephant... SO SO cute.

We finished off the day by having a drink up at the Amsterdam bar - a restaurant/bar place up on top of a mountain which has a huge deck with amazing views of the island.





... and now onto LONDON

London is surprisingly warm for the season - it hasn't rained yet and I'm walking around without my beanie and feeling pretty good. Although I am very grateful to Julia who donated her very warm jacket to me while I haven't bought my own and waiting for the after-christmas sales.

So far we spent two days walking around London and seeing a lot of touristy things. We saw the Buckingham Palace, walked through Hyde Park (and saw some very round ducks --->), stood accross from the Westminster Abbey, climbed St Paul's Cathedral, walked past the Tate Modern gallery, past the London Eye (where we indulged ourselves into some waffles and observed people dressed in sheep-like costumes jumping up and down on springy thingies), walked past Big Ben and had numerous rides on the tube.

Last night being Christmas Eve we attended a cooked meal by Zoya's South-African boyfriend Clive... who is an amazing cook! We were fed roasted chicken, a huge yummy pork, roast potatoes (his own special recepie), sweet honey carrots, roasted asparagus... oh and we had these cream cheese rolled in bacon entree thingies that were very yummy... and then he went for the kill and served us pudding with two different sorts of lard to be put on it... we had VERY big trouble dragging our stomaches home... even now (at 7:30 in the morning - and yes I'm still adjusting my body clock) I still feel the little brick sitting in my stomach and multiplying.

Hope you are all very well and wishing you very good Christmas and amazing New Year!

Actual Photos

Tropical Rain
View from Sea Scene (not raining for a change)
Reclining Buddha

Old Pottery

Ayuthaya
Ayuthaya 2
Emerald Buddha
Emerald Buddha 2

Photo Update

Koh San Rd
Of all the places you'd think you could avoid a Mormon it would be here, but no not so. Same outfit, same little plaques, same annoying sermon. Sorry no photos, but a video when we see you next ;-)





Ayuthaya

A large historical site and ancient capital about 2 hours out of Bangkok. More temples than you can poke a stick at, some still quite well preserved others less so. The majority of these temples were looted especially the heads of the Buddha images - so any of the ones that now have heads attached are those where the correct head has been found or recreated and reattached. Overall a very impressive site and one we definitely want to come back to and see more of. A couple of pics included here, but many more to show when we see you next.

ayuthaya photos 1, 3, 4


Grand Palace and nearby Temples

This day was an overload of oppulance, gilt and solid gold, jewels, colours and completely impressive structures.
The Emerald Buddha about 70cm tall (and alegedly not emerald) sits in a huge temple constructed especially to house him. He has three sets of clothing (Hot Season, Wet Season and Summer) which the King personally still dresses him in at the start of the season. No photos inside the temple, but allowed from outside - 10x zoom very useful though would be better with a tripod.

emerald budda and his house photos

Most of the structures are covered in old pottery which was apparently used as ballast by chinese sailing ships at that time.

old pottery photo

The reclining Buddha (at 15m tall and 46m long) is the largest in the world, and was quite impressive. The whole structure is covered in gold leaf and the feet (5m x 3m) are inlaid with mother of perl scenes. The actual temple that he is housed in was built after the Buddha image was cast on site. Around this temple there is a huge complex of temples which contain amongst other things the remaining Buddha images salvaged from Ayuthaya and other old sites around Thailand.

big budda and temple complex photos

Across the river is Wat Arun (temple of the dawn) - last temple photos (for now) ;-)
Again here is is probably more obvious that it's old plates etc... used for the decorations.

Wat Arun 1 and 2 photos



Koh Phangan

So after our flight (including unwanted detour to Phuket due to too much rain in Koh Samui) and a short boat ride from Koh Samui to Koh Phangan, we'd finally reached where we wanted to be. The usual port side mobbing by bungalow owners / hawkers followed by a "taxi" ride (more or less a ride in the back of a ute) through the flooded streets kinda set the scene.

After looking at a few bungalows we settled on one just a bit north of Thong Sala (the main port). Here are some photos - a typical day:

tropical rain

And when it's not raining

sea scene

They also have some cute, albeit noisy and hungry (read annoying) kittens that have taken to joining us for every meal - mainly cause they can spot a sucker when they see one and have been doing pretty well out of in terms of bits of food.

kittens



So that brings us more or less up to date in terms of photos too. We haven't really been doing much on this island. A bit of drinking and eating, a few moments of lying on the beach and a lot of sleeping.



Hope you are all well.

Cheers

Jack...

It's the little things

That you really notice on your trips overseas, those things that highlight either how much of a different world you are in (or how much of things is really the same). Some examples to illustrate:

1. Fried scorpions, beetles, cockroaches, etc... - only seen available at Koh San Rd (Chappel street meets Queen Vic Market meets back streets of St.Kilda - ie a tourist mecha) and do you know what - not one local ever seen eating them. "Bet ya that I can make these drunken white guys eat insects"?
2. On the train back from Ayuthaya (historical site out of Bangkok) we decide that we will pay double the price (40 baht = $1.333333) for a 2nd class (includes aircon and no livestock allowed) ride home. After the obligatory struggle with the ticket issuing guy I notice again that we have tickets with no seat number on them. On the way up this had meant not "sit anywhere" as we were told, but rather "be ejected from one seat after another as the people holding the tickets turn up". Oh well at least it is aircon. So we board the train and show our tickets to the police / military who look at them and seem to be quite annoyed. They proceed to yell at the station staff from the train, and then get down from the train and yell at them in person. After a bit of this they get back on the train and offer us their seats. My assumption is the yelling was "what the fark are you doing selling these crappy tickets to foregin devils, you know that means we will have to stand". ;-)
3. While snoozing the night away at the airport (our flight left at 6am and as we'd been drinking until 12am there didn't seem much point paying for a hotel that night) the security / military dude complete with gun walks towards our little uncomfortable nest. Here we go I think, about to be told off / ejected / woken up. But no - he sits down on the bench across from me, gives me a nod and lays himself out for some well deserved shut eye. I have to stuff my hand in my mouth so my laughter does not wake him.
4. Power company workers (we'll try to post some photos soon, but the wiring around here makes untangling 4kg of cooked spagetti seem easy). Two guys are walking around Koh Phanang (island just off Thailand where we currently are) one carries what could be described as a ladder but is better described as two bamboo poles with assorted bits of wood tied to them. The other carries a roll of wire about the same size as himself. The process is lean bamboo poles against power pole (or power lines if pole is too hard to get to) cross to opposite side of road. Run towards 'ladder' and attempt to get to the top of it before it collapses. Then feed yet another wire in amongst the 50 - 100 already there. Note that this was a "scheduled" power outage - I hate to see what temporary repairs are like ;-)

Anyway that's enough rambling from me. though all of this could be summed up with a phrase that's getting a lot of action around here "Same Same but Different".

Cheers

Jack...

Koh Phangan is not Phuket

We left Bangkok on a 6AM flight to the island of Koh Samui. The only way to get to Koh Phangan is by boat hence we had to fly to the closest boat-departing point. Our 1 hour flight with Bangkok Air was quite pleasant and we even got fed a hot breakfast. As we were beginning to descend, Jack and myself were already talking about how in just a few hours we will be lying in a hammock and sipping something alcoholic and listening to the sound of waves nearby. And as we're having this conversation the plane which almost descended enough to land suddenly gained momentum and speedily started going up and up and up... and then there was an announcement - "Ladies and Gentlemen due to bad weather conditions we're unable to land in Koh Samui and are going to be landing in Phuket International Airport instead"... And so we spent about 2 hours in Phuket waiting for weather conditions to improve in Samui so we could land. And at about 10:30AM (instead of the scheduled 7:00AM) we did indeed land in rainy and cloudy Koh Samui. After which we caught a speed boat to Koh Phangan.

The island is relatively small and the tourist population here is mainly budget travellers and backpackers... so there are a number of parts in the roads that are just mud. And considering the fact that it's been raining for a good part of the last couple of months the mud is quite thick and in places there are trenches that the water made and these are a couple of meters deep. Right at the pier we got surrounded by people offering accomodation, and so we went to look at a couple of those but most of them were a bit scary. Now whoever was telling me that Thailand only has drop box toilets - it's not true. Even the shabiest bungalows have normal western style toilets, however the water level is these is quite high as Jack pointed out on a number of occasions.

We spent most of the day looking for a place and even got driven around for free by a german guy Stephan in his suzuki jeep (there's heaps of hitchhiking going on here and the deal is that you jump in the back of a ute type arrangement, which is just too cool for school). Stephan has a Thai girlfriend and spent 3 years here operating a restaurant. From our very short time here it seems that there are quite a few people who come here and just decide to stay since it's so temping. Finally we found the place where we're now... it's called Sea Scene and for a reasonably expensive here 550 Baht a night (which is about $18.3 AUD) we have a pretty big bungalow with a separate toilet and shower (and unlike Bangkok the shower is actually not over the toilet which is pleasant). There are coconut palm trees in the very close vicinity and the beach is only a couple of steps away.

Our days are very difficult here from such a large variety of things we need to get done. Yesterday for example we got up at about 11AM, walked about 27 steps to the restaurant to have breakfast, had a swim and a lie down on the beach reading, then had a nap in the bungalow, then got up to eat again, followed by a screening of 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' - briefly interrupted by another trip to the restaurant for an evening snack, and finally went to sleep again. It's a hard life this life on a tropical island!

Hot and Sticky Bangkok

So here we are in hot and sticky Thailand. It hasn't been a culture shock at all... and the more I think about it this place seems to be a mix of Hong Kong and Moscow... Moscow architecture and Hong Kong stalls on the streets and constant bargaining.

We're staying in the heart of dirt cheap tourist place - Chinatown... Koh Sun Road... the street is full of touristy crap and tuk tuks.

Some noteworthy things at first glance...
- lots of t-shirts being sold on the street with all sorts of things written on them. At the same time I saw a Thai guy pacing up and down the street with one that said 'Shut up bitch'... not sure whether he knew exactly what it meant or whether it was aimed at someone in particular (his wife or mother perhaps) but it did strike me as a little odd.

- both McDonalds and KFC do deliveries here... Straight away I see images of the obese children in Australia statistic rocketing off the scale

- we stayed in a 700baht a night hotel last night (which is reasonably cheap)... about $23. And the blankets which we got were nothing more than a large green towel :) And the shower (and this is in every hotel that we looked at) is strategically positioned over the toilet! So in other words the toilet is always damp and makes me shiver with thoughts of how hygenic this actually is, but no matter. We managed to locate a similar arrangement place for 380 baht and relocated this morning... and although this place is cheaper we actually get proper white sheets for bed linen.

- one thing I just love about this place is fresh fruit - there are people walking around with trolleys of frozen watermelons, pineapples, you name it... so you get a large slice of that in a platic baggie all cut up for 10 baht and it is delicious! mmm - this is almost as good as russian ice-cream in waffle cones.

- along with fruit in a bag you can also get softdrink in a bag... literally - so imagine a normal small size blue Coles bag with a straw in it and full of something cold and refreshing :)

- streets are abound with cats and dogs... both very friendly. And cats are very small in size - much smaller than either of ours which are King Kongs compared to these ones.

- tattoos... there are heaps of people with them and heaps of places offering them. If I wasn't a whimp in thinking that the places are probably very unsterile then I'd get myself one. May be a large head of a lion accross the whole of my back... and something cool like Yakuza over the top of it?... or not.

- speaking of tattoos, yesterday we saw a bunch of guys on harleys ride along the street.. and here I don't think there is a law which says that you have to put a silencer on it... it was SO incredibly loud that my ears hurt like from a rock concert. And Hell Angels must be pretty popular as I saw a couple of guys with that tattood on their backs.

- last night standing on the side of the street and eating 15 baht worth of Pad Thai which was made riht in front of us on another one of those trolleys we noticed a couple of girls in very short golden hot pants prancing back and forth along the street, and a bunch of other girls wearing very skimpy clothes... a huge asian guy in black t-shirt and gold chains approached one of the girls and gave her some sugar floss on a stick which she started eating fairly slowly and then licking her fingers in such a sexually revealing fashion that it made me even hungry for it... not.

Tomorrow we're off to Authaya Provence which has the largest island of temples around... *end transmission*

We have lift off in T minus 5 hours

And it really hasn't sunk in. We've just taken approx 50kgs of crap to the freight place, pushed another approx 50kgs into our combined luggage, dropped the rest of the sh1t off at our shed and now we're just counting down...

My mind still does not comprehend that there is no:

1. house to go home to
2. work to be bored (put paid) at
3. quick trip to the pub with my mates
4. etc...

Life is about to get very very strange when I strap myself into the seat and my body removes itself from where my mind is solidly embedded by several thousand kms...

I hate goodbyes - and have said far too many of them over the last few days to people well friends, mates actually that I care a lot about and would on the whole rather be close to. To those of you who fall into that category I have to say "I'm gonna miss you rather a lot" please try to write (and I promise to try to write also and not just blog - btw is 'blog' really a verb yet?).

To those of you who we will see soon very much looking forward to catching up.

Take care all and remember "Natural is not synonymous with safe" ;-)

Jack...

Homeless and Jobless

So here we are - no job (well at least not any paid job), and no place of residence. In Russia such a person is called a BOMZH (Bez Opredelennogo Mesta Zhitelstva) which literally means 'One without a particular place of residence'....

Running on about 10 hours of sleep total in the last week made us both feel like we're in a state of delusion... and when everyone was asking me at the going away party whether I'm excited my immediate answer was that I haven't really thought about it. And we still haven't.

Looks like the next post will be from Thailand.... warm, sunny place with great yummy food... mmm... food *Homer's drool*