On wednesday 15 of us (out of a group of about 40) left the realgap group, fed up with the lack of activities and the remoteness of the eco houses, and headed to Chiang mai for a few days. After about an hour of trying to figure out buses, we finally got on a fully airconditioned, double decker bus to chang mai for the 8 hour journey. Arrived at around 2 am, found a hotel and crashed. the only problem was there werent enough rooms, so we had to do some rooms of three, and seeing as it was 2am there [View Full Entry]

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After kicking up a fuss about being put in the wrong house, i was eventually moved to "brow" (brown) house as our guide, oliver calls it - yay! Unfortunately this good news came at a price- me not seeing a step in the dining room and stubbing my broken toe very, very hard. Everyone was screaming for oliver to get me some ice, as there was none in the fridge, and after 5 minutes of faffing around he emerged with tiger balm, which apparently, can mend anything! not so sure about broken bones though... he did finally bring me some ice [View Full Entry]

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Explored bangkok a little the next day, and then met up with my group for the first time in the hotel lobby at around 7. We all went out for a meal and drinks together, to break the ice, which happened surprisingly fast. The meal and drink soon turned into a meal, drink and then onto a bar/ club, then another club, eventually deciding to all go to a ping pong show together- we were taken to an extremely seedy place, nd were all rather unimpressed by the whole thing, and kind of sickened by how depressed or blank all the [View Full Entry]

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Arrived in Bangkok at about 3am, picked up by a random thai man who spoke very little english but got me to the hotel safe which is all i really cared about at that stage. Had a little trouble understanding the thick accents of the people at reception through my sleepy haze, but evntaully made it to bed at around 4- very nice to be in my own room, and i even had a double bed! Got woken up by a text from laura at about 11, one of the girls who had also arrived in thailand early, and we wandered [View Full Entry]

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Our first night in sydney was an absolutely amazing night, with our bus driver bernie who proceeded to get very drunk and buy us all drinks, dance with us, jump on us etc etc. Lots of cheesy music and arm linking to songs such as "wonderwall" which was kinda sad, bringing an end to our trip, but we had a really fun night in all. The next day we got a bus pass and did the sights of sydney. The opera house was the main one we wanted to see, and it was pretty surreal to be standing there touching the [View Full Entry]

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My next few days in Byron Bay passed quite uneventfully, mainly due to the constant, torrential rain which pretty much stopped us from venturing out of doors for anything but neccessary trips! You would step outside and be drenched within 30 seconds, even an umbrella helped very little because it was that annoying sideways rain that gets you no matter what! We spent a lot of time in our dorm room, chatting, playing cards, jsut basically wasting the days away, then ventured out each night to the club which was thankfully just across the road, and therefore just about accessible without [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday was a very unique day, as we hopped on a bus and headed to visit the town of Nimbin. The pictures probably give a better explanation than i ever could, but its basically just a hippie town where you can't walk ten metres down the street without smelling pot/ being offered pot/ being offered "special" cookies. Some of the signs (and people for that matter) provided us with much amusement- my favourite being "bringabong" instead of "billabong". The drug use there is so blatant that the police kind of leave everyone alone and turn a blind eye to people lighting [View Full Entry]

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On Sunday after our very large meal at the hard rock cafe we weren't really feeling up to anything exciting, so spent the rest of the bay wandering round town and lazing on the beach. That evening we decided to do the sensible thing and stayed in- rented a film from reception and watched it in the movie bus- an old schoolbus type thing parked in the middle of the hostel and tripped out with pink leopard-skin seats and a big t.v. The four of us girls all brought our duvets and pillows in there and went for a bit of [View Full Entry]

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Spent much of my last day in Brisbane trying to find shoes that would fit onto my very swollen foot, as i was currently walkign round the city barefoot - lovely i know. Then hopped on the bus to surfers paradise , or surfer's parasite as my bus driver called it- hes clearly not a fan of touristy beach areas where all there is to do is surf, sunbathe and go out clubbing, but its fun for a few days! When we arrived in surfers we found, to our great pleasure that Kristie siobhan caitlin and I were all in the [View Full Entry]

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Arrived into brisbane in the rain and went to explore the city a bit... ended up mainly just on the street with all the shops! That night we went to the club that is attatched to the hostel for "ladies night" which meant that all the guys in there had to wear womens clothing, otherwise they wouldnt be served drinks. Day 2 in Brisbane, met a really nice girl called Siobhan who is doing oz experience too and was staying in Caitlin and Kristie's room- turns out she is doing almost the identical thing to us too, so will be sticking [View Full Entry]

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