More Photos

Hey there, as the internet is free here i've been messing around with flickr to display my photos. I haven't got it all worked out yet, like how to blog a set of photos but if you click the link below you'll get a set of photos which you can comment on individually or view as a slide show. Let me know if you prefer them like this or embedded in the blog as before.

December Photos

Wow, it's our last day in asia, this is basically the half way point of our trip. Though it seems we've been away for a long time i think the next 3 months are going to really fly and then i'll be back in england, crazy. Also i have a map of the east above me and i can see the that the total distance we've covered from hanoi to singapore is about the same as from Cairns to Brisbane and we intend to cover twice that distance in 1 month, yikes i can see some long bus journeys ahead!

Happy Christmas from Malaysia

I'd like to wish everyone a very happy christmas.

Suze and I are in the Cameron Highlands at the moment and will be until tomorrow evening ( the 25th) when we'll be taking an overnight bus to singapore, the joy of travelling! Malaysia is certainly a little more festive than thailand, what with it being an ex-british colony but both suze and i wish we were home for christmas. I think we're going to try to generate some christmas spirit by buying exciting gifts for each other from the local market and we've watched die hard 1 and 2 while it's been raining so there's some more christmas there as well. Still in a few days it'll all be over and then we'll be in australia for january instead of miserable england so it's not all bad.

The past few days have seen us visit Penang and KL before coming up here. Penang was nice enough, not a huge amount to do but it felt good to be traipsing round cities again after 2 weeks of beach bumming. We spent 3 nights there and then went to Kuala Lumpur which was a cool city, we saw the Petronas towers and marveled at the sheer scale of the shopping available. We thought it'd be nice to get out of the heat and head up to the highlands, it's been raining a lot and feels similar to england in october. We're both looking forward to Singapore where we're spending 2 nights before jetting over to Australia for new years.

Full Moon (or not!)

They cancelled the full moon party! 6 guys went swimming 2 days before the party at night and at least 2 of them drowned. I thought this happened quite regularly but apparently not so they decided to stop all music on the beach as apparently the rips are pretty bad at this time of year so everybody was milling around the town. It was disappointing but i still had a great night, James was on a bucket powered mission which lasted until about 6ish. Fortunately we had been to the beach the 2 nights before so we knew roughly what we were missing, Suze and I are planning some sort of scuba diving + full moon christmas holiday at some point in the future.

We've just hit malaysia after possibly the worst bus journey of the trip, we were supposed to be travelling from 6am til 7pm but we ended up arriving at 2am after waiting 2 hours in thailand and then getting stranded at the border for another 2. Then 2 buses magically appeared to take us to the right destinations but we had to pay 100 baht each, how convenient! It wasn't the biggest problem but we might add another day in Penang now. Malaysia is a fair bit cheaper than thailand which is nice, we're planning to enjoy the last few cheap days of our trip as it's all western prices from here on, yuck!

Thai Islands (Photos)

Greetings, please accept my apologies for being rather slack recently but i've got some more photos for you to peruse so i'm sure you'll forgive me.

Going back a week or 2 we were in Chang Mai where we found these sculptures which i quite fancy having at my parents house in England (what do you reckon mum?)



Our trekking in Chang Mai was through some proper Thai Jungle



On the second day we got to go on an elephant for an hour which was awesome



Looks like a lady, in fact, it's a chap



Ah ha. That was in Chang Mai, but in Bangkok there was also a dodgy looking backing dancer ( i'm hoping it was just the one ;)



The one time we got scammed in Bangkok we did get to see an impressively tall Buddha



The temples in Bangkok were awesome but i particularly liked these 2 dudes



And that basically covers the past week or so, now for some new stuff!

We travelled from Bangkok overnight to Phuket on the west coast of Thailand expecting sun and beautiful beaches. The beaches are pretty nice, though somewhat overdeveloped, but the weather wasn't great, we got rain about 3 days out of 4. Still it was nice relaxing by the beach and it was still about 28 degrees so we were hardly freezing. From Phuket we got the ferry over to Koh Phi Phi to meet Em and James. PhiPhi is something of an enigma, almost everyone there is a backpacker yet the accomodation starts at $20 and for $80 you get a shack by the beach, it's all about four times more than the rest of thailand and i don't know why. The tsunami hit Phuket pretty hard, you can see smashed palm trees and maybe some of the building sites in this pic



We took a boat trip around the islands which was good, we went to the beach, as in 'The Beach' (Think Leonardo DiCaprio)



The snorkelling was fantastic here and the film crew apparently did a great job of clearing the place up when they filmed here. Later that day we got tuna sandwiches which were really nice though you wouldn't know it from this photo.



Suze and I left Em and James behind to get over to Koh Tao which offers some of the cheapest and best scuba diving in the world. We're 2 days into our course now and we do our final dives tomorrow morning, after which we'll get our open water certificates, lovely. Then the next day we're off to Koh Phangan to meet back up with Em and James and go to the full moon party, I can't wait.

Bangkok

Hello there, we're currently in Phuket, one of those typical paradise islands you see on the posters with the golden sand and palm trees. However the weather is the worst we've had yet (It rained yesterday and it rained today, weak)

I doubt there'll be much to report from here as it's just a chill out on the beach sort of place but hopefully Em and James will arrive soon.

Bangkok was hot and humid as you might expect. We arrived on the first day and fell for one of the oldest scams in the book, a friendly guy asked us where we were going and ended up sending us on a tuktuk tour of the town which also included a stop at a tailors and a travel agents, but we did get to see a 45m tall Buddha which we would never have found otherwise so it wasn't too bad.

The next day we went to the floating marked which used to be really cool about 25 years ago but now it is seriously over-touristy and rather a waste of time. Fortunately it only took half a day so we could see the temples in the afternoon which are amongst the finest we've seen. I'll do some photos soon. That night we went to Patpong, the red light district of Bangkok. The main road wasn't really the sort of place we wanted to chill and have a drink so we went to the gay alley next door where the places were more welcoming and had a few drinks. Later we watched an Elvis/Tom Jones act on straight street with a rather dodgy looking backing dancer, you'll see what i mean soon.

The next day we went around the commercial district of bangkok and then got an overnight bus down to Phuket. We plan to stay here a few days and then go over to Koh Tao for a scuba diving course and then Koh Phangan for the full moon party, should be fun.

As a final note i'd like to say congratulations to Suze for going out with me for 4 years, scary stuff eh! :)