If you live a country like Finland, there is almost no option do you appreciate spring or not. Except those who suffer from allergies almost all the finns are great fans of spring and many things related to that. The Sun is finally shining and I could not be more happy about that. Especially after my time in Singapore spring feels great, it's like I'm getting my energy back. Growing flowers and grass, Eastern, birds, refheshing rain, umbrellas and the smell on spring inspires me the most. Although I don't draw and paint anymore (...) all the colors of spring kind [View Full Entry]

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Time to go home had come and we needed to leave Krabi behind and head to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to get to the plane to London, England and from there finally to Helsinki, Finland. We had a long, long way to go but we didn't mind. Our super cheap tickets from KL to London by Air Asia, which has just opened a new LLC route between Malaysia and England, kind of made the long buss trip up. We were though wisely (at once!) so we had almost couple days in KL to calm down, do some last minute shopping and what [View Full Entry]

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Don't even start to dream about budget accommodation when thinking about Don Phi Phi islands. We did but we needed to forget those thoughts and stay in real. Our hostel's (or actually it was The Inn, what's the difference anyway?!) location was in Krabi which was both the easy touchdown point to Phi Phi and place to relax, shop and sightsee as well. Phi Phi's beauty wasn't big surprise at all. Like almost everyone knows already it's been in the movies and it's the topic of conversation for travelers all over Thailand. The other side of this allure was that the [View Full Entry]

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If you are looking for something a bit different than ordinary boat tours in Phi Phi Islands or so you should try to Mangrove Kayaking river tour middle of the forests. The area where the trip started was called Ao Thalan, I guess all the different tours started from there so it was just up to your bargaining skills how much you end up to pay for it.. The Kayaking itself then, it was lovely and exciting. Our English speaking guides told us about the mangroves, wildlife living there and the history of the area. We also saw wild monkeys in [View Full Entry]

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After our travels through Cambodia and Vietnam we stopped for couple of days in Bangkok, to calm down if I can say so when speaking about Bangkok.. and did some last minute shoppings before heading down to the paradise islands. I felt I needed some place to relax and fix my head since I have started to wake up in the mornings with the feeling "where am I" and sometimes during the day I might wonder which place we were yesterday.. so we decided to head to somewhere just to R-E-L-A-X. This was the very first time for us to go [View Full Entry]

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We had only been just a couple of weeks in Vietnam but I had almost fell in love with the country and its people. The feelinf didn't start to disappear even after our long nightbuss trip from Da Nang to Hanoi which is the capital of Vietnam. Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that our places were back of the buss and we were sharing them with the three men, some liquid was dropping from the buss' roof and there were people lying also above us in the second level beds.. Honestly I can't recommend that to anyone. [View Full Entry]

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Da Nang is the fourth largest and a major port city in the South Central Coast of Vietnam and Hoi An is a small city almost next to it. We wanted to stop some smaller cities along our way from Saigon to Hanoi and Da Nang has been told to have numerous sites of natural beauty and historical interest. Also the landscapes I saw from the train's window were breathtaking, so green and so lush, people working on the rice fields with those hats, so synonymous to Vietnam. Night train from Saigon was.. hmm.. interesting but not a bad experience, to [View Full Entry]

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After Cambodia we headed to Saigon, Vietnam The bus ticket was ridiculously cheap, US 7$ per person from Phnom Penh to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh city). Everything went OK when travelling to Vietnam. Bus dropped us before the border and we walked to passport control. Luckily we realised early enough our passports were eligible for free 15-day visas so we did not need to apply Vietnam's visa at all! It seems someone had done something right when speaking about politics. Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam and at a first glanse it seemed to be FULL of crazy motocyclists and [View Full Entry]

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The next logical destination after Siem Reap was obviously Phnom Penh, the capital and largest city of Cambodia. Although I personally liked Khmer food which consists of curries, stir fried vegetables, rice, noodles and soups a lot, my stomach strongly disagreed with me, and we were not only avoiding the street food but also eating in pretty good places. Did not make any difference. During our staying in Cambodia (almost a week) the food was pretty much a problem for me ( and also for Anniina later on...) The buss trip from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh was surprisingly short, only [View Full Entry]

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Our great great holiday season (after half year hard studying in Singapore) started from Bangkok, where we were 26th of February. We spent couple of nights there just chilling out and calming down, preparing for our "Grand Tour". Bangkok was, once again wonderful. I don't even know exactly why but somehow that 'City of Angels" appeals to me. The following blog entries I will post without pictures. I am so sorry for that but it would take me for ages for me to get the pictures downloaded, trust me I have tried. So I will add the photos later on. (Just [View Full Entry]

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