After our cooking class we went across the boarder and into cambodia. I won't lie to you I was starting to get a bit overwhelmed by the Thailand travelling experience and was dying for a change of pace....I certainly got it. 5 hours from bangkok to the poi pet boarder, you see the black and white photos in my blog i thought i would be artistic. So we waited for people to get there visas done the walked across to the bus on the other side which drove us to our taxi and a 3 hour journey across dirt roads. I personally loved the experience, but i can see why people don't love the road. I won't rattle on too much as we stayed in siem reap and saw the temples everyone sees. but i ... read more
We caught the train north stopping in lopburi in the hopes of finding some monkeys but only managed to find a reggae bar and a bottle of rum. It was my birthday and i had a 10 hour train journey ahead so we thought we may as well do it in style. (see pictures of the celebration). We arrived in Chang mai and had a day of sight seeing and then jumped straight into a 3 day 2 night trek... which consisted of Elephant riding jungle trekking and bamboo rafting. Sonia and i had a great time but I will let the photos do the talking, none of the rafting as the camera would have got wet :(.. I have had a few issues at meal time and I met a person who has solely attributed ... read more
Over night in Ayutthaya COnocida antiguamente como la capital del reino de Siam es un lugar lindo para pasar 1 o 2 noches contemplando los templos y las construcciones antiguas, aunque se puede hacer por elefante o tuctuc la manera mas divertida definitivamente por bicicleta que fue lo que nosotros hicimos.. es interesante tratar de ocnocer la ciudad y al mismo tiempo cuidarse de no tropeza con un elefante en las aceras :) . despues dimos un paseo en bote par acompletar el recorrido de templos y por ultimo para descansar fuimos a un restaruante flotante otra de las atracciones de ayuttaya .. la comida es excelente y tras 2 tragos decidimos irnos en nuestra bicicleta aun sobrios para evitar cualquier accidente.. ma;ana es el cumplea;os de matthew y nos vamos para el pueblod e los ... read more
Bangkok Baby!! what a city.... I think this place has a little bit of everything. We left the full moon party tired but happy with our island hopping efforts and ready to see another side of thailand, We caught the 12 hour overnight bus to Bangkok and were dropped off at the side of the road near the ko san strip. being 5am We figured anywhere would do but we wern't sure about ko san as we had heard so many traveller horror stories.... but we were lazy and managed to find a place nearby which had a bed bathroom and aircon for a buget price so we were sold. Although we intended to sleep as I hadn't had any on the overnight bus we thought we better do the essentials laundry, shopping for toilet paper ... read more
We left ko phi phi in a hurry we had all our clothes in the laundry so when we asked if the clothes were ready 30 minutes before our boat left it caused a bit of a panic behind the counter they had to raido back to the house and informed me that the clothes were still wet... no problems i said just bring the clothes so we can leave but this was not going to do they insisted on drying the clothes even if it ment we were going to miss our boat or not.... Luckly with around 5minutes to spare we had the clothes relativley dry and squashed onto the boat back to karabi so we have moved on from ko phi phi and across to the east coast (boat, bus, boat) where there ... read more
Back on the travelling scene again and this time south east asia, I got a bit held up by a delayed flight and ended up in phuket close to midnight luckly the hotel i was staying even though was not 24 hour check in was still open. I was a bit worried because they said they were going to close reception and sonia hadn't arrived but they said i could wait out front and i could let her in when she got here which i estimated would be around 2am... of course we didn't have cell phones so this was going to be fine ... then it started to rain.. so i thought maybe i will sleep in my room until 2 and then wait until she arrived no use waiting in the rain... I woke ... read more
i have included this blog to describe the crazy things that happened on my last days travelling in South America and to document how ripped off i was at the new zealand airport customs check on the way home. Well technically i have gone all the way around south america catching a plane from bogota to quito -- santiago chile -- then Buenos Aires... it has definately been a trek even though i have cheated at times and caught planes. My last days in Buenos Aires had been perfectly planned out... shopping, drinking, shopping, drinking, eating repeat. and all was going well till the last day where after some shopping me and some of the boys from the hostel decided to hit the casino for some wholesome gambling fun... of course me and the american ... read more
They say sequals never live upto the original and one reason i don't like to visit the same place twice but i was drawn back to bogota and didn't regret it either. I spent the first day souvenier shopping as i hadn't bought one gift for my family yet... a combination of the fact that i am lazy, selfish and never think of others, a crap shopper, and the fact i am travelling and couldn't be arsed carting big ceramic pots and wooden carved grand father clocks all over south america. so i thought i should finally actually buy something, there was a store that sold some para military stuff that looked really cool but it wasn't open the day i wanted to buy my stuff so i missed out. in the end i bought a ... read more
So i decided to check out the close by city of Medellin since my time in south america is rapidly coming to an end... what did i find? well quite a nice city in my opinion not quite as nice as Bogota but quite similar in many ways once the drug trafficing capital of the world today it seems quite a safe but busy city. in the centre, markets line the streets selling rip off brands i almost picked up a pair of 'puna' (puma) shoes for a bargin price but they didn't have my size. Medellin is also the birth place of Fernando Botero and hosts some really amazing artwork and sculptures all over the city, the museum is also quite impressive and worth a look. So I spent a day walking through the ... read more
After a extremly long sleep in and late breakfast Sonia, me, Jamie, Andrea, Andrea´s boyfriend and a carload of others set off for Villa de Leyva for the weekend. Sonia´s family set off earlier and we would meet them there later in the afternoon. We arrived a tad late but stopped by a local hippodrome and besides my persistant requests to sonia asking if i could put some money on the races she told me that they don´t have gambling here and don´t be stupid....of course my horse won! but it was quite good to watch the horses seemed a bit young carry jockeys that seemed way too big but i think they only ran over 500 meters so i don´t think it was too much for the horses. after setting our stuff down in the ... read more