Jeanette takes on the world

It has been a wonderful month. It started off with traveling with one of my bestest buddies Danielle for 3 weeks. We did a whirlwind trip of Thailand, the first week of which I will post about now. We started in Bangkok for 2 nights. Nothing magical happened there except that I fell off a curb and sprained my ankle pretty bad (surprise!). Our next stop was Ayutthaya, a former capitol of Siam, and home to an amazing array of ancient ruins. We spent a day exploring the former kingdom, and also got terribly lost. We decided to walk everywhere we went, which, in theory, would have been a great idea. Unfortunately, due to bad maps and personality conflicts, we ended up walking on the side of a very busy road in a bike lane for ... read more

Hello all. My trip is almost over. I leave for home tonight. After spending a few days in the town of Krabi recovering from my food poisoning in an air-conditioned hotel with television I moved on to Ko Pha-Ngan to meet up with my new friend Charlotte, one of the British group I have been tagging along with the last few weeks. The journey to Ko Pha-Ngan was rediculously stressful. I was so sure of myself in catching the right bus and thought I knew all there was to know about being taken at the bus stations, but somehow I still got scammed and ended up on a crappy bus which took me on a tour of the countryside picking up passengers in every little town at every bus stop. A two hour journey took me ... read more

I have spent the last few days in Phuket. I flew in on Thursday evening and arrived at my guesthouse, Fantasy Hill, at 9 at night. The place was located between two beaches called Kata and Karon. This area was a lot more mellow than the more popular party beach called Patong which was further north. So, Fantasy Hill was the cheapest place I could find in the area. It was not really any fantasy I have ever had though. No hot water and a little grubby. It was in a good location though and an easy walk to the beaches. My first night there I walked around a bit and saw a lot of bars with many thai girls waiting to conquer a man (prostitutes). I went to the first bar where I did not ... read more

Yes, I am still alive and well and not yet in prison, kidnapped, or sold into prostitution. I even talked to strangers and got a little drunk. Amazing I am still alive I know. So, the flight was LONG. And the food was horrible, but I had to eat it being that my flights were so incredibly long. Anyway, got to Bangkok late last night, checked into my hostel, all was well...I managed the public transportation pretty well on no sleep. The people here are great. I have not felt uncomfortable at all. No high pressure sales tactics like I was expecting either. So, today I wandered around the city, my feet are killing me! I went to a market full of loads of crap, aisles and aisles all selling the same junk. Ate some questionable ... read more

So, today’s blog is brought to you by Jeanette. We left Dunedin, but not before visiting the “steepest street in the world” in the Guinness Book of World Records. We walked to the top and back down, not feeling it was really any steeper than a San Francisco street, but, if they say so, I believe them. We then drove north to Mt Cook, a spectacularly high peak where we took a short hike through the snow to view its beauty. Then we drove to a town called Methven where we went snowboarding on Tuesday at a ski field called Mt Hutt. More snow than we’ve seen in New Zealand so far, and the best ski area yet…we had a good day. Tuesday night we went to Christchurch where we spent the next week at a ... read more

Entry by Ryan: Wednesday July 11th, Its seems today we did nothing but drive, after waking up and packing the car we drove out of Invercargil to the Catlins conservation park on our quest to find penguins. As always we drove through plenty of beautiful scenery along the coast and arrived at our destination. For once we arrived at our destination to coincide with the proper tides, this time to see a petrified Jurassic forest. Walking along the rocks on top of the petrified forest was cool, but what we had really wanted to see was penguins, there were also frequently dolphins is the bay but we were not as excited to see those. Unfortunately we were not lucky at this beach with any wildlife, except the usual seagulls. So we decided to continue our search ... read more