We made it 2 Asia, 4th continent in as many months..


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June 21st 2009
Published: June 21st 2009
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So.. after nearly 2 months in Africa, 2 days in Europe, 2 and 1/2 months in Australasia.. I've made it to my 4th continent in (just over) 4 months and the 1st that I've never been to before...

I should start back in Aus.. I think the last time I wrote we were just back in Darwin after 3 days in Kakadu. We stayed another 3 days in Darwin, we walked all the way to Fannie Bay to see the Northern Territory museum which was great then stopped for many beers on the way home to cool down.. we seemed to drink quite a lot of beer in Darwin.. but then so did most people. One night we went down to the outdoor deckchair cinema down on the beach to watch Australia which was pretty epic, considering we had just spent 3 weeks touring the outback!

After our few days in Darwin we flew back to Brisbane and made our way back to the gold coast where Asia preperations started, though we weren't quite done with Queensland - day trip to Brisbane(Brisbane is great! wish we couldve spent more time there), football (rugby) game titans vs saints, more visits to the coastline to get fresh prawns from the trawlers, visits from various members of jays family to say goodbye - after a week and some near teary fairwells to jays mum and sis, we went back down to Sydney for our final few days.. we visited darling harbour, the aquarium and central quay where a 'display' was happening. they lit up the opera house with funky patterns and put on a play about a convict ship that sunk on the water down towards the Rocks. We also spent a day with Jay's little cousins Maya and Benji and tried to explain to Benji (who fell in love with me!) why I couldnt come back and visit him again for at least a few years...

A final hairy trip to the airport where we made check in by about 5 minutes and then on our plane to bangkok 😊

We arrived in Bangkok about 3am where we were met by our hotel man to take us to the hotel. after the startings of winter in aus then coming to the stifling 27 degrees at 2am we were pretty happy to find we had aircon! we missed breakfast by sleeping in the morning and slowly made our way into central bangkok. having no idea where we were going and no idea how to pronounce anything in the guide book we found ourselves getting out of the taxi in Banglamphu, the backpacker central of bangkok, and found ourselves a sweet little guest house with leafy garden and old teak furniture and a fan. we stuck around the hotel after a quick wander through the markets, knackered from our late night and flight the night before. but next day we were up by 8 and barely out the hostel for 2 minutes before a tuk tuk swept us up and we were off to the lucky budha, tourist office (if we went here our driver would only charge us 10B as they pay for his petrol) where we booked our 3 days tour out of bangkok, and then to the grand palace and temple which were stunning!! that evening we had an early one to be up for our tour.

next day we went to ayutya, the old capital of thailand and spent the day being showed around temples and buddhas and eventually to the stunning summer palace of the king of thailand, wow!! we got back to bangkok about 5 and went to explore khao san road the mad and bustling touristy centre of banglamphu, we had a good night of drinking cheap beer and then got some phad thai and spring rolls from a street vender and another early night as the next morning we were touring again.

this was a 2 day tour this time, 1st day was the floating markets then onto the river kwai ww2 memorial site (which i had never heard of before but was a massive thing in thailand - and for the british who lost 30,000 men there!) then tiger temple, a place where buddhist monks care for cubs whose mums have been killed by poachers, our last stop of the day was a pretty waterfall for a nice chillax before heading to our floating hotel for the night.

yestderday was insane, we woke up on the floatel and went for a bath in the river.. with some elephants! they had a great time dunking us under and squirting us with water.. it was the most incredible experience definately one of the top ive ever had. after the hour playing around with our gentle giants we headed back to the floatel for our 'bamboo rafting' which equated to sitting on a bamboo raft as it floated down the river. the river was too tempting so most of us jumped in for a swim or clung to the raft and just drifted.. it was so relaxing i cant even describe, complete silence, leafy mountainous surroundings.. so surreal. we then went for our elephant ride which all seemed a bit tame after our bathing that morning but was still fascinating to watch the ellie's, especially the interactions between ellies and their keepers. so cute! some of the keepers were as young as 9 or 10!! what a way to spent your childhood!!

we arrived back in bangkok last night after a 4 hour drive around 6 and went back to the same guest house as we had previously and back to khao san rd for a couple of drinks and dinner and then asleep by about 10 after a pretty exhausting day all in all. today is pretty chilled, had brekkas and then here to let you all know what im doing 😊 and im doing pretty good!!

hope everyone else is too!
we've got today and tomorrow in bangkok and then off to hanoi, capital of vietnam on tuesday morning .. cant wait!! xxxxxxxxx

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