Apr 2007

Hello! well we have now said goodbye to our first tour group and have just completed our second tour (treasures of the north) which took us from Bangkok to Chaing Mai then back to Bangkok.

Monday:

We went to Sukhothai (the first capital of Thailand) we stayed in basic, cosy rooms beside some rice fields which was gorgeous. We spent most of the day travelling so by the time we got there we just went to the pool of a nearby hotel for an hour or so before having a buffet of traditional Thai food for tea. The food was gorgeous, one thing i have learned since being here is that EVERYTHING is so so spicy!! Even Tom is finding it spicy!!

On tuesday we went on a bike ride to the Sukhothai historical park which is basically a load of old ruined temples. It was so so nice just to ride through them and stop and wander round them. Both Tom and i much preferred these huge old ruins to the temples that are still in tact! There was something incredible about gigantic stone statues that were hundreds of years old - much much regal than everyhting covered in gold as is the way in every other temple!
We stopped and had a picnic lunch next to one of the temples before carrying on our bike ride. Doing it by bike was so much fune, it's AGES since i rode a bike! The temerature was 44 degrees which made it very sweaty and a bit harder but it was still fun!!

Wednesday started with a 4.5 hour bus journey to Lampang which is the only Thai-town to still use colourful horse-drawn carriages as a means of transport - of course ths was somehting we had to do!! Tom and I both felt really bad though because the 'horse' turned our to be a small, rather tired looking pony! Nevertheless the 30 minute ride around Lampang was cool and a good was of seeing the main parts of Lampang (there isnt much to see really!). Before the horse ride we all visited a local herbal spa for massages and mud-packs which was great fun! I really am not flexible enough for these Thai massages though! They bend and twist me in so many different ways and try to get me to touch my toes which really hasnt happened for a good 10 years! The boys opted out of the mud-packs for the sake of being manly and just had the Thai massage - Tom was left commenting on how many different times his back had cracked!!

That evening we were having a lovely meal on the Wang River bank when the heavens opened, and i mean OPENED!! I have never seen lightenng like it, nor heard thunder so so loud!! It really was incrediible to watch - instead of lightening every few minutes it was every few seconds pretty much continuously!! OUr accomodation that night was in a guesthouse where we slept pn matresses on the floor as the locals do! Despite my initial shock ('oh my god where are the beds!?') they proved to be very very comfortable and a great experience! I was highly confused in the orning as to what i was doing on the floor though!

Thursday was my favourite day of the whole trip so far. We visited an Elephant Conservation Centre just outside Lampang where we started by seeing the elephants having their morning bath which was so so cool! Their Mahout (trainer) went into the water riding them and then srcubed them which the elephants loved! After that we saw an elephant show. I hated the idea of seeing an elephant show after seeing them in the wild in Africa but it was really really good, less of a show than a demonstration. The 'show' was demonstratin how the elephants were used in the logging trade and the different ways in which they pulled, pushed and picked up the logs. AFterward swe fed them with sugar cane and bannanas. There was a really cute baby elephant (about 11 months old) which tom and i both fell in love bith and so fed loads and loads of bannanas!! Im sure you will see it ont he photos - we took loads!

After the show we went on elephant rides. This was a 30 minutes trek through the water where they had bathed and then up though the jungle - it just about beats the 10 minute ride you get at zoos!! It was the most incredible experience - i enjoyed it so so much!! At the end of the ride we went past a pen which was separated form the rest of the elephants. This held a mother elephant and her baby which was just 1 month old! It was the cutest thing i have ever seen!! Obvuiously loads and loads of photos were taken, no wonder my memory card is nearly full!!

Once the ride was finished we visited the gift shop and bought some paper made from elephant dung (it really doesn't smell at all!!)
before going next door to the worlds first elephant hospital. This was so so sad. We saw an 11 month old baby whose foot had been blown off after it stepped on a landmine and also a 46 year old adult who had suffered the same. The adult was in the guiness book of world records for being the first elephant to undergo surgery of this kind and also for the most medical professionals involved in a procedure - there were 150 people involved! It was so sad seeing these animals with only 3 feet and obviosuly their size makes it so much harder for them. The big elephant had lost 30cm from her leg which stil hasnt healed properly (8 years after the operation) and is having problems with the leg son her other sides as they are struggling to take the extra weight so keep getting sores and infected. The baby is doing much better, she only lost 10 cm andd being a baby her muscles have been able to grow more and faster to support the extra weight. Her small size also helps. It was just so sad - the mines were in Burma and the elephants were rescued from their :-(

We were picked up from the elephant hospital by the local people we were going to spend the night with and taken to visit the Karen hilltribe in a remote village. These people still live very very basically and make cloth trough traditional weaving methods. I took some cool photos and bought 3 hanging decoration thins which you see everywhere in Thailand - don't really know where i'm going to hang them now on second thoughts but hey they cost 1.00 for the three and were supporting some poor local people.... Thats my justification anyway!! They are pretty and blue, need i say more?

We then travelled on to the homestay where we were sharing 4 to a room, again sleeping on the floor. The house was gorgeous - very simple and traditional but beautiful! Some children from the lcoal school came and played traditional Thai instruments for us and then tried (!) to show us how to play them which was great fun! We then had a northern Thai khantoke dinner which involved 4 poeple sitting on the floor around a raised circular table. It was great fun and the food was gorgeous!! After dinner we were treated to some Traditional thai dancing. The girls did one where they held lit candles between their fingers and twirled around really gracefully - not dropping hot wax on themselves at all. They then picked 3 girls from our group (yes i was an unfortunate one!!) and we had to do the same! Let's just say iu wasnt graceful, the wax did drop on me and i dont do twirling!! Honestly i wasnt that bad bt no where near as good as them, apparently it was a dance that the King's daughter had done for him and was now a really popular dance in Thailand. When the dancing was over we lit a Thai lantern which was a huge cylinder made of paper type material with a wick underneath. You light it, the cylinder fills with hot air and rises up into the sky .We had fireworks attached underneath so as it rose the fireworks went off, it was beautiful to watch!

Friday morning was an early start with us getting up at 7am to offer alms (food) to the monks. This is done daily by the locals and HAS to be done - the monks dont make themselves breakfast! After a godo breakfast we went on a bike ride through the surrounding villages and countryside. The scenery was lovely and it was ncie to be out in completely unpolluted fresh air cycling through the rice paddies. We stopped and visited a mushroom farm and picked some lunch, i cant stand mushrooms but it was really interesting to see their way of farming - its so different! We also stopped at a village house where they make traditional clothing and bags to pick up some souvenirs.... No i restrained myself this time although Tom picked up some things!!

We retiurned to the house for lunch before travelling the 40 minutes to Chaing Mai. There was time for a shower and a small rest before we caught taxis up to the hilltop temple of Doi Suthep. The view out over Chaing Mai was amazing from so hight up! We stayed and listened to the Monks chanting which was cool but slightly eerie before returning to our hotel in time to do some serious shopping in the night bazzar! The entire street wasa packed with stalls and both tom and i spent hours (and lots of money!) wandering around the stalls and doing a LOT of haggling. At about 12pm, after a subway, we decided to call it a night and head back to the hotel. It was then that we realised that we hadnt even gone to the night bazzar, it was a separate shopping centre-looking thing on the side of the road! We had just spent hours in the street stalls without even getting to the bazzar!! Ahh well, we return to Chaing Mai in about 14 days at the end of our next trip... night bazzar watch out!!

Next day we got the overnight train back to Bangkok, again this was a lovely bumpy ride with very little sleep gained!

helllooo!! well a lot has happened in the few days since i last updated you all...

Monday was spent travelling in a combination of minibuses and then a public bus that seemed to be made entirely of shiny tin. This had no air conditioning and was PACKED! Our tour leader told us that the journey was supposed to be 2 hours but it turned out to in fact be a 5 hour journey, NOT the most comfortable experience!! Due to the time that we arrived in Nakhon Si Thamarat all we did this evening was eat and sleep.

On Tuesday we got up early and went to Wat Phra Mahathat the biggest wat (buddhist temple) in southern Thailand which was really cool - there was so so much gold everywhere and loads of Buddha statues! We met some monk chioldren who were there on a trip and had some photos taken before leaving to get a bus and ferry to koh Samui. We arrived in Koh Samui at about 4pm and went straight to the sea!! It is such a beautiful place - a real paradise island as im sure you will have seen from the photos!

Wednesday was a day trip to some of the nearby islands where we went snorkelling in the marine park, lazed on the beach and went to see the emerald lake. The snorkelling was AMAZING, the gides gave us bread to take in with us so the fish were eatign out of our hands and there were hundreds of them!! We were completely surrounded by fish that were swimming on toip of each other, all we could see was fish! We had lunch on the beachof a random island before going to another small island to visit the emerald lake. This is a saltwater lake supplied only by an underground tunnel frrm the sea and is THE most amazing green colour. It was quite a trek to get to it though, loads and loads of really steep steps up over ths hills and then back down to the lake - it was worth it though! That evening we went into Chaweng (the main place in Koh Samui) and went to a ladyboy cabaret show which was fantastic!! Once you got over the initial shock it truly was a great show - the costumes were really cool! Obviously there were lots of very very very strange looking people there but most you could not tell that they weren't 'real' women - much to the worry of the guys in our group!! We had such a great night, it was such a laugh and something i would really recommend doing!!

On Thursday Tom and I along with the other couple (nick and Trish) ventured to Chaweng - the main beach and shopping area on Koh Samui. This is the tourist area and the whole essence of Koh Samui and being in paradise was spoiled by evertyhing being exectly as it is in spain - i truly could have been on Calpe beach!! I much preferred our beach which was beautiful and quiet and hardly touristy at all. I had a wonderful Thai massage next to the pool - i have NEVER been stretched in so many different ways, it was really bizarre!!

Friday was our day of leaving :-( We caught the ferry back to the mainland before getting a bus for 1 1/2 hours to the train station where we caught the overnight train to Bangkok. This was a really really long journey - 12 hours on the train!! I was much much better than we expected - we had been told to expect cramped, hot and noisy conditions however we found ourselves in a carriage with really big spacious seats, roomy bunk beds and so airconditioned it was cold (i had to put a jumper on!) Also pretty much the entire carriage was asleep in their bunks at 8pm so not noisy at all!! Despite this none of us slept well at all due to the fact that the train bumped along the tracks so much we thought it was about to/had already derailed!!

Saturday was spent mainly sleeping and recovering from the lack of sleep from the night before then some shopping on Kohsan Road!!

hellloooo from Penang, its been a few days and a lot has happened so thought it was about time to write a quick update.

After Kuala Lumpur we went to a small island near Kuala Kangsar to live with a Malay family for 2 days. The family live on a small island in the middle of a lake which was created by the first dam ever bilt in Asia. We arrived on the evening of Friday 13th and were welcomed by a beautiful dinner of traditional malay food (such as rice cooked in banana leaves). we spent the evening playing traditional malay games and speaking to o ur hosts - Aziz and Asiah and their 3 year old son Azam.

Saturday saw us getting an early start to go across the lake to a local malay village where we were able to see traditional malay homes and the rubber tapping industry that these people survive on. Most of the trees in the jungle were rubber trees and it was really cool to see the pots attached to the trees and the rubber comming out. We carried on further into the jungle on a pretty hard trek to a waterfall. Due to the fact that it had rained most of the previous night and all that morning there were LOADS of leeches so we were given lemons to squeeze on them to get them off. They are the most foul creatures i have EVER seen!! They were all over my legs and i even ended up with one on my back and one at the top of my thigh :-( NOT good!! The waterfall was beautiful though, as was the jungle we had to walk through, so it was very much worthwhile despite the leeches traumatising me! We spent the afternoon swimming in the lake before we got dressed up in traditional malay sarongs to enjoy a traditional malay mean. This was all traditional malay food eaten whilst sat on the floor. You can only eat with your right hand as, ion their culture, the left hand is used for toilet duty! It was pretty hard to master picking up rice and sauce with only 1 hand, and messy too, but really really good fun!

On Sunday morning we left at 9am to go around Kuala Kangsar. we visited the Sultan's mosque which was beautiful although not as large as many others we have visited. We also drove past the palace and visited a street market next to the river which sold loads of wierd and wonderful local fruits. We then caught a bus and ferry to our next stop, Penang.

Tom and I were in a Taxi with another couple (trish and Nick) and the taxi driver decided that he couldnt remember the name of our hotel despite our tour leader having shown him a map and the address! this was a problem as none of us knew the name of the hotel so after driving round Penang for an hour on what was supposed to be a 20 minute journey we abandoned the taxi and trish and i sat in a barw ith a drink whilst the boys went on a search for the rest of our group. Luckily we had ended up only a 5 minute walk away from our hotel and found a cool bar selling mexican food at the same time! We spent the afternoonw andering around local shopping centre (its GIGANTIC!!) before goign to a local night food market for dinner. I ended up spending the grand total of 85p on my dinner which was roasted duck with noodles and a can of coke - the BEST duck and noodles ever :-D All od the weight i lost in tanzania is quickly goign back on - all the food here is so fatty and greasy and so so good! All the people seem to do here is eat!

After dinner we went back to the hotel and hahd a party in our tour leader's room as he had a penthouse room with a rooftop terrace thing. Needless to say everyone apart form myself got ridiculously drunk and had a great night!

It's now 12:55 on Monday and we are in an internet cafe after only gettiing up and leavign the hotel at about 11 - it was a really good night! Time to go now and explore penang before we leave for Thailand tomorrow.

miss you!

lou

xx

hellloooo! i'm currently in Kuala Lumpur on our second night here so thought i'd write a quick blog to update you on what we have been up to.

On Sunday (8th April) we spent the day wandering around Chinatown in Singapore before meeting our group (there are 12 of us in total) at 5pm. There is another couple in the group, Nick and Trish who are both English, an irish guy called noel, an australian guy called Ben and an English girl called Meeta as well as an Australian family of 4 which is quite cool. For the suatralian family this is the first time the parents have left Australia in over 25 years and the first time ever the children have left the country or gone more than 2 hours away from home (they are 19 and 14) which is quite strange for us as they are very very VERY naive - especially the 19 year ofl girl, we thought she was 15!! Everyone is really nice - only slight downside being that they are a bit quiet and not as much fun as the greenforce lot, possibly due to the family being a large part of the group and also the mixture of ages. Everyone gets on really really well though which is good as we have some really long bus journey's!!

Monday (9th April) - Today we set off at 8am to Melaka which was a 6 hour bus journey. I thought this would be a killer but, aside from when we were crossing the border from Singapore into Malaysia, i slept for the ENTIRE journey!! The pillow nan mason bought me is really comming in handy - it is SO comfortable! Melaka is an old port town which started off as a small fishing town but now, mainly due to tourism, is pretty large with a big shopping centre etc. It was really nice to spend the afternoon wandering around the small shops down the narrow streets -VERY different from Singapore! In the evening we went on a trishaw tour of Melaka and stopped to visit the oldest chinese temple along the way. The temple was beautiful -considering it's age and the materials it is made out of it is in wonderful condition and it was really interesting to hear about the history of why it was built there. The trishaw's were AMAZING! we had seen trishaw's before in Singapore but didnt go on one but these were in a different league - they were so so elaborately decorated (the one Tom and I went in was shaped like a boat and COVERED in fake flowers and fairy lights) and many had music and flashing lights! I felt awful when we learned that the driver (or rider maybe?) was 65 as were most of the other riders! I felt like I should sit him in the back and I should ride - especially as it was a pretty long ride (about 45 mins) up some hills! We had great fun though and it was a great way to see a lot in a short time.Melaka is the type of place that i would like to have more time to explore - we arrived at 2pm and left at 11am the next morning so didnt have too much time and the winding streets and wooden shoes that they make there were calling me!!

Tuesday (10th April) - we set off to Kuala Lumpur today, a slightly shorter bus journey at only 5ish hours. Our hotel is in the mioddle of Chinatown which is really cool and right next to Petlang street which is a big night market selling LOADS of gucci bags and rolex watches etc - im sure you get the picture. The only difference is that these are REALLY good quality and ridiculously cheap! It's a really fun vibrant place to wander round and the haggling is great - i'm ruthless!! Our evening meal was in a cool (and very cheap) chinese restaurant where the food was amazing. We just spent the evening wandering around the night marketbefore getting a relatively early night.

Wednesday (today - 11th April) - Today we went on what was supposed to be a half day tour of Kuala Lumpur but we set off at 9am and got back at 3.30 so more of a full day really!! Fist we went to the King's Palace, the grounds were gorgeous and so so well maintained and the building looked amazing but obviously it was a long way back from the gates!

We also visted the largest Mosque in Kuala Lumpur which was very very impressive although we wernt allowed to go into the main prayer area for some unkown reason as we are usually allowed to. The women all had to wear full length robes (alter server style) and head scarves - these were so HOTand claustrophobic, i really dont know how the women wear them all the time!!

Next was Petronus towers - unfortunately we didnt get to go up as it would have meant several hours queuing but we went and stood at the bottom and got some cool photos - they really are GIGANTIC!! They are more commonly know here as the twin towers (for obvious reasons) and since September 11th, they are now the tallest twin towers in the world - 88 storeys and stand at 452 metres above sea level.

Then onto the Royal Selangor pewter factory - the largest pewter factory in the world where wee went on a guided tour and saw how they made most of their stuff. It was really cool to see the really detailed engravings being done - such monotonus and manual jobs though, very hard work and SO boring! We saw the largest pewter bear tankard in the world and a really big model of patronus towers made entirely out of normal sized petwer been tankards which was pretty impressive. Unfortunately everything was REALLY expensive so souvenirs were out of the question! :-(

Next was Menara telecommunications tower. It is one of the tallest concrete towers in the world, standing at 421m. It is the tallest tower in south-east Asia and ranks fourth in the tallest telecommunications towers in the world. We got a guided tour so now i'm an expert on this tower!! Despite the fact that it was raining we got a really good view over Kuala Lumpur and took some cool photos. The view would have been awesome if it hadnt rained but it seems to do that a lot here!!

Unfortunately, due to the heavy rain we didnt get to go to the botanical gardens but we had a really really good day and saw most of the main places in Kuala Lumpur. We ate at a dodgy chinese/malay street restaurant for tea and had some really nice noodles :-D

And now im sat in an internet cafe writing to you! Tomorrow we go to Kuala Kangsar for 2 nights where we stay with a traditional malay family and visit some waterfalls and the beach which should be cool!

In the mean time i have sent another CD home when i wa sin singapore with photos on but the links below will take you to all of my photos - some of them you will have seen but many are new...

My Birthday Party:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4020&l=77a94&id=602500397

Mid phase Break:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4024&l=0a748&id=602500397

Mid Phase Break continued:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4026&l=f0ad0&id=602500397

Camp:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4030&l=b3608&id=602500397

Meserani Snake Park Pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=12751&l=7b84f&id=602500397

Eluai Pics: (Eluai is the name of the Maasai village we lived in):

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=12755&l=f7ec7&id=602500397

Random Tanzania Pics:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4022&l=5b9e8&id=602500397

Zanzibar Pics:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=12757&l=905f9&id=602500397

Singapore:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=12764&l=cc02e&id=602500397

Melaka Pics:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=13489&l=4b359&id=602500397

Kuala Lumpur pics:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=13493&l=20f2a&id=602500397

If you cant click on the link just copy and paste it into the address bar at the top

Enjoy!!

miss you

lou

xxx

hhheeelllloooo!! SO today i found them ost depressing thing in singapore a shop called ' XXL Sizes available - 12 to 18' I'm now officialy XXL! tom found that hilarious and has been taking the mick out of me ever since! Anyway enough about that, onto what we've been up to....

Friday: Today we went to Sentosa island 'Singapore's resort island'. The viewing tower was pretty cool, great views out over singapore and we arrived on the island via cable car from the city which was very very cool. however aside form the beach there was a distinct lack of things to do without paying large amount of money for the privilage and being cheap travellers we didnt want to do that!

in saying that we did pay to go on the luge - a cool go-kart type thing where you go down the side of one of the hills which gives you great views out over singapore and the sea. A skylift takes you back up to the top - i e-mailed mum a photo of tom and i on that :-)

The most impressive thing about sentosa island was seeing the merlion, one of the main images of singapore which was very impressive!

We left sentosa in the afternoon and got the monorail to vivo ciity - the largest shopping centre in singapore. It's HUGE! It only opened 3 months ago so is incredibly modern, there is a park on the roof with a really big grassy area as well as a shallow swimming pool and a kids play area - a really really nice place to shop apart from beign riduculously busy but it probably didnt help that we went on a bank holiday...

Despite the disapointments we had a really good day out at Sentosa - and tom was happy because it didnt involve TOO much shopping (although he's bought more than me since we got here!!)

When we got back to the centre of Singaporewe went to the cinema and watched Mr Bean. Everyone was going crazy for it -laughing at absolutely everything and loving it!! It was a really cool film, made cooler by the fact we were watching it ini singapore with chinese subtitles!

Saturday: Today we went to Singapore zoo which was incredible and also saddening at the same time. It was an amazing zoo, almost like being in a rainforest as it was full or greenery and awesome trees and the animal displays were fantastic, they looked really real and comfortable. However, the problem being that, once you have seen these animals in the wild, no matter how nice their cage is it is still upsetting to see them in captivity. Especially saddening was the big cats - metres of space to roam around in rather than miles and miles of African bush. A really cool zoo though, and we had an ace day out :-)

Sunday we left the Hangout (*sob*) and moved to The Royal Peacock Hotel in Chinatown which is where we start our first trip. We are currently sat in an internet cafe in Chinatown, we meet the rest of the group at 5pm - looking forward to that! Tomorrow we start the trip by travelling to Melaka in Malaysia, we enter Thailand on the 16th April.

Anyway nothing else to update for now, ill e-mail and blog as often as i can though unsure as to how much acess to internet we will have

miss you

lou

xxx