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Published: December 18th 2008
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Hello all!! Hope everyone is good? Its almost xmas.. can't believe it...
We stayed in Varkala for about a week in the end - we moved from our lovely bamboo hut due to a scary night involving nightmares and screaming... we ended up at Santa Claus Village (yes it is open all year round and yes there are life size father xmas statues and xmas trees!) and then another hut after that (due to the bed being similar in comfort to sleeping on a table). So we moved around a lot but relaxed alot too - did lots of shopping and lots of sunbathing... lalala
As you can see from the photos we encountered a rather large and very scary spider one night in our hut (photo does not do it justice - it was huge... see how the beady little eyes sparkle!) - would love to say we shared the hut with it or that we carefully moved it outside to live the rest of its life happily but... we both got scared called the boys who worked at the resort and they came with a big broom and squashed it!!
So we planned our route out
of India - for any of you with any kind of geographical knowledge of the country or who can be bothered to look on a map, our route will seem extremely illogical and a little mental but... it was the cheapest route we could find out of there!! So we left Varkala at 6pm on the night train to Chennai which arrived at 7am (uneventful journey apart from the men above us turning the light on at 5am to read his book.. grr!) we then took the most scary rickshaw journey to Chennai airport - weaving in and out of ten lane traffic at ridiculous speeds (for a rickshaw anyway) - Tanya clung to her bag for every second whilst Pilch laughed and filmed the event to treasure forever!
Next we had a 4hour wait at Chennai airport ... dull airport number 1! Next an hours flight to Mumbai (yes mum... sorry I went to Mumbai without warning you first but we thought you would worry too much!) and then we had a 9hour wait at Mumbai aiport ..with only a KFC for comfort! Finally we took the flight to Bangkok at 1am in the morning and 4hours later
arrived to a small shock to the system - the roads were organised, the people were all happy and NOT staring at us, the streets seemed clean and everything in the shops had a price!! Hello Thailand!!
After several days of travelling we arrived at our reserved room (we thought ahead and actually got ourselves a bed...) only to be told that we couldn't check in until 2pm and it was 9am!! AHH!! Luckly the hostel had a TV room so we slept in there for a few hours...
OUr introduction to Bangkok was a little extreme as we wondered down the road taking in the quiet streets (no horns!) and then turning the corner to find Bangkoks answer to Soho!! We were offered ping pong shows every couple of steps, there were sex dvd's being thrust in our hands and girls dancing in their underwear in every door way!! A little bit of a shock to the system after India and it took Tanya a little persuasion to get Pilch to keep walking down the street! Luckly she found a sushi resturant to distract him.. which happened to be amazing!! All you can eat sushi for about
5pounds each - it was a little confusing but we worked out we had an hour and a half to eat whatever we could. We got offered soup which the lady brought along and put on a small heater which you could control from under your table. Pilch grabbed some raw beef and shoved it in his mouth only to turn round and find a group of japanese men staring and then laughing at him, they quickly said "well actually we cook this" - whoops! From then on whenever we took anything of the conveyor belt we had to check with them if we needed to boil it in the soup!
We moved to Khao San Road area the next day and spent ALOT of money on clothes - Bangkok is not a cheap place. We booked into a nice hotel with a swimming pool on the roof allowing us to get a little more sun 😊 We went for lunch just up the road and Pilch saw someone he knew from Brighton sitting across the resturant! After a few beers together we arranged to meet up at new year in Koh Tao...
So we took a night
train to Chaing Mai a couple of days ago - the train is a lot different to those in India and even included a resturant cart and we had beer and food brought to us at our seats! However we had been booked two top bunks and they don't turn the lights off all night or turn the air conditioning down!! It slowly dawned on us as we drew into Chaing Mai that the temperature was a little lower here and that we may need jumpers!
We spent one night in Chaing Mai before heading to Chaing Dao for a couple of nights in a hut by the mountains. We went for a long walk along the "nature trail" which turned out to be a bit of a hike, and went and saw the caves there as well as the Buddhist temple. However Tanya was ill most of the time there and the nights got very chilly so we decided yesterday to begin to make our way to warmer climes.. time for some island chillin!
So we are back in Chaing Mai today and flying to Surat Thani in the morning - should be at Koh Phan-Ngan by
the afternoon .. looking forward to some blue seas and sunshine - think we may be getting hooked! 😊)
We had some more yummy cheap sushi for lunch and we are about to go hit the nightmarket...
Take care... we will write again soon xxx
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Hayley
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Mr J. Sparrow
Tanya, even when we are in completely different places the same thing happens.... I found jack sparrow here too last Friday night! haha :D although yours looks a little more realistic! Hope youre well sister, call me soon!!! Love youuuu xxxxx