May 2007

helllooooo well since i last wrote i have done way more exercise than i have in the past year and im not enjoying it - exercise is the work of the devil!!

Saturday: today we slept in, had a BIG free late breakfast before getting a taxi all the way back across Bangkok to Kohsarn road and our next hotel - the Sawasdee Banglumpoo. This is our 13.00 per night wonder and was actually really nice! i was so so surprised! Cheap and cheerful but clean and not ridiculously small :-) That evening we went to see Spiderman 3 at the Imax at the Siam Paragon - the largest screen in Thailand! It was a really cool experience - pity the film wasn't so great! The shopping centre was IMENSE - it will probably give you a good idea when i say that on the 3rd floor was several shops selling Ferrari's, Lamberghini's (if that's spelt right!), lotus and other super cars, god knows how they got them onto that floor!!

Sunday: Today we just moved back to our joining hotel to meet our new group. We knew that it was going to be a lively trip when one guy turned up an hour late saying 'sorry, i was out drinking!' This was at 5pm! Dint do much other than get a briefing of the trip and go out for some food....

Monday: Today the travelling started again! Early in the morning (early being 9am!) we set off in a longtail boat down the Chao Praya River to the Wat Po temple, the home of the HUGE reclining buddha. Tom and I had already been to this before so the temple was pretty bring but the boat ride was cool and we got to feed the GIGANTIC fish in he river with bread again so it was well worth it!

After the canal tour we got on a 3 hour bus ride to Kanchanaburi, home to the infamous 'Bridge on the River Kwai'. Once we arrived we went on a salmor tour around Kanchanaburi and visited the Brige on the River Kwai (really should be spelt Kwae) and the Prisoner of war memorial. This was a truly humbling experience, 100,000 people died building the bridge and it was awful seeing all of the memorial plates. I never realised the magnitude of the horrors that occurred there, i had heard of the bridge on the river Kawi and had a vague idea but this really opened my eyes.

That night we went to the local night market and then on to a bar across the road form our guesthouse.

Tuesday:

Tuesday morning we set off at about 10am to board our big floating raft where we spent the day cruising down the river Kwai, swimming and visiting temples. Now when the itinerary said 'raft' and 'sleeping under tha stars' we expected a raft as in a basic bamboo structure but oh no - our raft had a roof, and came complete with electricity, a bar, a disco ball and even Karaoke! We visited the Dragon temple which had a RIDICULOUS amount of stairs that we had to climb barefoot! Once we reached the top we found a cave that we decided to climb down into - still barefoot - which was pretty cool! It was a really cool cave, full of bats so it stunk but there were loads of stalagtites and cool rock shapes. It was also lit by loads of different coloured lights which gave it a really surreal feeling!

We spent the night on the raft and needless to say everyone eded up very very drunk doign karaoke whilst floating down the river! It was a really cool night! Yes i did do the karaoke despite being sober, and yes i am aware (as is the rest of the group now!) that i cant sing at all!

"i just wana dance with somebody.....!"

Wednesday:

Wednesday was an early start with us first visiting the Jeath War Museum and then heading off to Erawan National Park where we spent the next few hours walking up the 7 levels of thge waterfall. Now that was a hard climb, especially in flip flops that cost 4.00 and are not made for climbing in the slightest! The waterfall was beautiful though and it was really nice to swim in the cool water after a ridiculouslt hot climb - the only problem being htat you ended up with several fish trying to eat you! Fish nibbbling at you is a really strange sensation, one i've decided i dont like - especially when the fish are pretty big!!

After leaving the waterfall it was ont o the tiger temple where we were able to sit with and have our photos taken with tigers. It was sad seeing the tigers chainedup but they all looked really healthy and Tong (our guide) explained that they had been rescued from various different places as cubs and now couldnt be released due to illness and being too tame. It was amazing being sat next to these gorgeous animals and slightly scary as we had been warned not to wear pink, red or orange as they may think that it is blood!! There are many other anilams at the temple from cows to peacocks and there was also an adorable 1 month old baby tiger cub that had been born in captivity at the temple. The monks look after all of the animals who are free (except the tigers obviously!) to roam around the temple grounds as they please. It was such a beautiful area and a really cool place to visit!

Needless to say the evening was spent at another bar (every night so far has been and we are 5 days in!) - tom and i left at 1am mindful of the fact that we had a 4 hour bus journy at 8am the next morning - most of the others didnt get back until 4am completely wasted!

Thursday:

We ended up leaving at 8:45 due to the fact that many of te group were hungover from the previosu night's activities :-P Ahh well, it gave me time for breakfast! We left on a 2 hour bus journey, stopped for 10 minutes and changed buses before continuing on another 2 hour jouney to Ayuthaya.

On arrival we grabbed some lunch before going on a tour of the picturesque ruins and temples spread across the town. It was really cool to explore the old ruins, especially at wat Mahathat where we could see the Buddha head surrounded by Banyan tree roots. The head has been slowly emerging from the ground for the past 100 years to its current position. Most of the Buddha statues int he temple are headless because they were cut off and sold to people within Europe as they were believed to contain jewels. The story of the Buddha head in the tree roots is that a robber buried the head and then forgot there it was and the tree roots have been slowly beinging it up over time. Its really strange to see this head surrounded by tree roots - imangine how wierd it would be to see it half out of the ground!!

After our tour we had some food and then boarded yet another overnight train to Chiang Mai. This wasnt quite as adventourous as the last one (aka no face pulling competitions) but by all accounts a few of the group members were up until 3am getting very drunk!

Friday:

After a night of very poor sleep we arrived in Chiang Mai, had a quick breakfast and shower and set off to do some elephant riding. This was much more scary than last time as we had a HUGE male elephant who was ridiculously greedy (he ate all of our food as well as anyone who happened to be in front of us!) as well as a mind of his own. He kept leaving the trail and wandering off the find something to eat - ending up pretty much standing only on his back legs at one point while he was trying to reach a branch he though looked particularly tasty!! I didnt really like this elephant place - at the Elephant Conservation Centre where we visited last time the elephants were kept in well maintaned surroundings with nice buildings and all looked to be in good condition. Here was another story - the few buildings that there were had either already fallen over or were about too and most of the elephants were bleeding from where their guides had been hitting them to control their direction. They used the same method of controlling their direction at the conservation centre but none of the elephants had been hurt there. Neither Tom nor I were impressed with this although the elephant ride itself was loads of fun.

Next was a visit to the hilltop temple of Doi Suthep. Tom and i amused ourselves by wandering around the antiques shops at the base of the temple as we had visited before and wern't all that enthusiastic to be there again! No i didnt buy anything, io restrained byself although tom is interested in a gong.... Watch this space!

After the temple we went the trekking shop to rent our trekking gear ready for monday. We had to rent smaller bags to carry our trekking gear for 3 days along with purchasing toilet paper, ever important here!

That evening we went to watch some Muay Thai (Thai Kickboxing) These wernt professionals as such - they ranged from age 8 to adult and were amazing! It is such a fast and brutal sport and so exciting to watch! After the 9 matches were over it was on to a local club (Bubble) to enjy some (awful) 'house' music which the rest of the gruop adored and Tom and I hated! We stuckl around for a few hours before leaving in search of some food around 2am - the others got back at about 5am!!

And that brings me to today, Saturday, where we only got up at 1.30pm and have eaten McDonalds and sat on the internet due to the fact that there is a MAJOR storm raging outside and you get drenched within 1 minute if you go out! When it rains here it really does rain and it's been happening a lot recently! We have had some gorgous, really hot days and then many others which are gloomy, overcast and wet. The thunderstorms really are incredible though - they make things shake!!

xxx

hellooooooooooooooooo!!

Well we arrived back in Bangkok on Saturday and it was raining, and i mean raining! The weather hadnt got any better by monday, the first day of our trip so we wern't hopeful!

Koh Samet is a paradise island about 3 hours from bangkok, about 30mins off the coast. It is a national park and is absolutely gorgeous, there is nothing to do apart from scuba diving, watersports and lounging on the beach. Slight problem when the loudest/worst storms i have ever seen are hitting the island and the whole of Thailand! The rain didnt stop the entire time we were there which was unfortunate as it was our only real beach relaxing time until we go to Spain. We were both cold wearing jeans and long sleeves, we laughed at this when we found out that it was 33 degrees! The past 2 weeks had been 40 or above so we were finding 30 cold! God help us when we get back to good old English summer!

Due to a lack of anything else to do I decided to give scuba diving a go and see if my dodgy ears would actually equalise - they did! so now i have my first level scuba diving qualification which i am extremely happy with seeing as i've wanted to do this since i was 11 (dont worry Dad, i forgive that IOU!)! Due to the awful weather the visibility wasnt great, max 4 metres but i did see a HUGE puffa fish and loads of smaller fish. The coral was awesome too, blue and bright orange! The first place they took me to to dive was further out in the sea, the waves were 3 meters high which made me go really green, especially as the dive boat we were on was TINY! We had just started to kit up to get in when a huge wave crashed over the front of the boat, hitting me in the face - needless to say we moved to a different area! The dive instructor later said that we would have capsised if that wave had hit us side on!!! The second place we went in we got back ut again after 5 minutes because the visitbility was only about 2 feet max and there was a really strong current which separated our group. 3rd time lucky as they say! the next dive was perfect, i went down to 8metres no problem.

Due to the time we had wasted with all the other abandoned attampts i made my second dive the next day (Friday). My right ear was playing up loads and it took me forever and a LOT of going up and down to equalise but i finally made it and did all of the necessary skills to pass my PADI Scuba Diver! I didnt have time to do the open water as this btakes 4 days and i only had 3 - hopefully ill be able to do this in Spain or England at a later date! Mags - are you up for a trip!!??

Friday afternoon it was back on the boat and a 4 hour taxi ride back to the hotel which i have so far forgotten to mention! The hotel is AMAZING! bearing in mind that we have been sleeping on the floor, this hotel was awesome! We arrived by taxi and our bags were carried onto a trolley by the porter while we went to check in, our bags then arrived in the room without us even having to say where we were!! There was also a cool outside landscaped pool area with poolsode bar which we would have enjoyed if it hadnt been stormy! well we were impressed anyway!!

Thats all for now - hope eveything is ok

cant wait to see you all

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