beautyandbeyond

So we left Railay to go to Ko Phi Phi the next day and we got about 50 people into a few small longtail boats out to the middle of the sea and then we had to climb up with our backpacks onto a big ferry, very fun and slighty daft as always. From the ferry you could see thousands and thousands of jelly fish, eeek! Phi Phi is two islands, one full of people, mainly tourists and the other empty, a protected island where the beach off of "the beach" is located. We stayed on Phi Phi Don, and it was packed full of shops, bars, restaraunts and resorts. We sat in a bar and had a nice 10am beer and Russ and Tony went off to find somewhere to stay as there is no ... read more

We arrived early evening and headed to somewhere recomended in the lonely planet book. We didn't find it though and saw somewhere else on Ao Noi beach, called Ao Noi seaview. Man was it a sea view. It was right on the beach front and to one side of the beach was fishing boats, to the other was a temple and at either end was big rockfaces plummeting into the crystal clear blue ocean. wow. The rooms were lovely too, really pretty with a sea view and the breakfast room looked out to sea too. We all went straight into the sea with some inner tubes that were free to use ( insides of lorry tyres) and were suprised at how warm the sea was. After about 10 minutes of splashing around I felt a sting ... read more

Sadly id didnt get much of a lie-in on my birthday but the early rise was well worth it. At 8:30 we were being picked up in a mini bus to travel to the mountains to do some Bamboo rafting, Elephant trekking and waterfallingness, what a day! So we had a decent breakfast before we headed out and Alicia started everybody off singing happy birthday, cheers Lis! The drive there was pretty windy and i think everyone was feeling pretty green by the time we got there. So we got dropped off right by the river and we had to get into groups of 4. So naturally in our group was Alicia, Mum, Tony and me. We were all assigned a raft and a guide/driver for our bamboo rafts. We were given a cheeky little chap ... read more

We got back in the evening and checked straight into out big budget backpacker joint on the khao san road, the pumping music, ladies selling frogs, cloths shopping heaven, fake dreadlock stores, tatoo shops, drunk drunk drunk westeners with or without many a thai prostitute, ahhh it's good to be back! The khao san doesn't seem quite so garish as when we first got here, maybe because we've been exposed to travellers a bit more and the touristy stuff, where as coming from India it was like being slapped with everything that's wrong about tourism. We decided to join in for one night and we got duuurunk! They sell buckets of drink here with two little straws stuck out and my oh my are they strong, we also managed to find many a 2-4-1 deal on ... read more

We left Phnom pehn on a bit of a whim as I suddenly felt better and ready to travel. Wies our lovely dutch girlie, left that morning very early for Kratie and we needed a smaller room as it was a three bed one with just two of us now. Non were available so we just got a bus to Siem Reap instead. We'd spent the last two days in phnom pehn doing nothing at all. Russ and Wies went to a water park and went down all the slides with the locals doing pile ups half way down and general goofing, much fun...for them, but I stayed at the guest house and slept, since the dengue I've been knocking up about 17 hours of sleep a day for 2 weeks, it's weird but it's also ... read more

Ever since we arrived in Cambodia I knew that i wanted to see some of it on a motorbike. This place is named as having the worst roads in Asia, which is would be great fun on a motorbike. I looking into doing an organised tour with a group of people. It would of been great because they supply you with all the equipment (bikes, helmets, body armour etc), have an excellent knowledge of where all the good trails are and they transport your bag for you to the next destination so its waiting for you at the end of the days riding, which also keeps the weight down on the bike. As great as all this sounds, the price tag was way more than i could afford, minimum of $120 per day and i really ... read more