Feel like I've walked the entire city today. Went to the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaem - absolutley amazing! For a country so filled with poverty... they certainly spare no expense on their temples and anything to do with their King. As with the world all over - you can't escape the scaffolding. A lot of buildings are in the process of being renovated, some I'm told for the past 10 years! Wat Phra Kaew (also called The Temple of the Green Buddha) is so beautiful I couldn't begin to explain and the Buddha in the temple is made of [View Full Entry]

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I guess you can't have one without the other... Pleasure: the islands of Thailand (soooooooooooo beautiful) Pain: Bangkok Thankfully Anna was already in Bangkok so I had someone to help me find a guesthouse and then show me around for a few hours before she headed home to Holland. ANNA - I miss you so much already!!!! Some observations on Bangkok; Road rules - there aren't any. You can never assume once you've looked left then right that some type of vehicle won't be driving up the footpath or the wrong side of the road or through a red light. Pedestrian [View Full Entry]

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Everyone warned me about the Tuk Tuk driver (here it's 3 wheeler bike with a bench seat on the back under a canopy) but I thought I can't come to Bangkok and not experience it for myself. So I found myself a driver who took me to the Tourist Authority of Thailand so that I could arrange my visas for Vietnam and India and some cheap flights. The deal was I either pay 200 baht for the ride or if I agreed to visit some of his "sponsors" he'd drive me around for 2 hours for free seeing the sights. I [View Full Entry]

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Everything was going way too smoothly! Said goodbye to Anna (sob... sniff) and Ko Tao at 9.30am. As always there's a lot of waiting around before and after getting on any mode of transport in Thailand. The boat trip was pretty comfortable - paid $2.50 to sit in an airconditioned section and watch movies. That should have been my first warning - TOO EASY! After about 6 hours on the boat we arrived in Surat Thani (but it wasn't the pier I left from to go to Ko Samui) - second warning. It was chaos. Hundreds of people sitting around waiting [View Full Entry]

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Well as we had avoided The Full Moon Party on Ko Pha-ngan we decided to have our own (well we do have white arses!!!). It's also Loi Krathong which is an important religious event for Thai people where they float small Lotus shaped baskets made of banana leaves with flowers, candles, incense and a coin on rivers, canals and lakes at midnight. We observed all this on the shore line with a couple of Singha beers. Before that we (Anna, Tanya and I) had dinner and saw a guy sitting all by himself looking rather sad so we invited him to [View Full Entry]

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Took a Taxiboat (called a Long boat) across to a small island called Nangyuan. So beautiful I was lost for words. Walked up a massive hill to overlook the entire island - which almost killed me but well worth it. Spent the day snorkelling which was amazing. The fish are really inquisative and if you just flaot around they swim right up to your goggles. I must have seen 20 or more varieties of fish big and small and every colour imaginable. Have to say I enjoyed this far more than the Great Barrier Reef and all I had to do [View Full Entry]

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I LOVE KO TAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A small island with really quiet beaches and no bullshit. The Thai people are so friendly and you aren't being pestered every 5 seconds to buy something. It's meant to be the rainy season in the Gulf Coast across November - but we (Anna, Laurent and I) had the best weather!!! The first accomodation was full - it was hot and our packs were heavy so we just took the very next one we could find. BIG MISTAKE!!! It cost us around $5 each and we definitley got what we paid for. The matresses were really old, [View Full Entry]

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Said goodbye to Clive and Phuket and caught a bus to Surat Thani (4 and a half hours) then a boat to Ko Samui (2 hours). Arrived at my digs "Your Place" (imagine me saying this to the driver in an Aussie accent.... "Can you please take me to your place?". Anyway I was walking to my room when an Aussie called Steve from Adelaide passed by and said "you just get in ... wanna join a few of us for dinner?" and that was that I had my new family to play with for the next few days. Anna from [View Full Entry]

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Headed to my first guesthouse - Talang Guest House in Phuket Town. Was a really hot day and the first time I'd really had to wear my 18 kilo pack for any length of time. Found the accom. alright but had no clue what to do and my head spinning and full of questions. Thank god I met Clive. A guy from the UK who had been travelling for 12 months and could see the terror in my eyes when I arrived. He helped me organise a room, answered all of my panicked and ridiculous questions and introduced me to 2 [View Full Entry]

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Arrived in Phuket November 5th 2005. Such a mixture of emotions, but mostly fear. Was really hard to leave my family after a fantastic 2 weeks back in Perth and even though I've been working towards this for months, I was still sad to go. THEN .... I arrive at my hotel (Merlin Beach Resort on Tri-Trang Beach). Absolutley gorgeous!!!!! Heaps of couples (yuk) but there were 3 pools that were landscaped to perfection and my room had every creature comfort. Had only originally booked 1 night but promptly went to reception and booked a further 2 so that I could [View Full Entry]

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