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Published: March 20th 2011
Hello, and welcome to my first real blog!
On Thursday evening, at around 3 30pm, I left my friend and, up to that point, constant traveling companion Simon Botley in the departures lounge at Singapore Airport. The first two months of our trip had ended and we were heading in (slightly) different directions - Simon flew to Cairns, Australia, to spend a month traveling down the East coast to Sydney before spending the same amount of time in New Zealand. I flew to Bali, to spend two months in Indonesia. Exactly where, I'm not sure, but for the moment I am in a place called Kuta. More to follow on that later...
Since this is my first blog, I feel that a summary of the last two months, from the time we left Heathrow on January 17th to the time of that departure last week, would be a good idea. Many readers will be aware of Simon's blog, in which there are already many entries - for those who aren't, follow the link here (http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Botley) to read full details of our trip thus far. Apparently, it's quite good. In any case, since such a comprehensive record of all that we've done so far already exists just a click away, it would be pointless me trying to compete/replicate that. In my opinion, a far more interesting way of summarising the last eight weeks would be to construct an imaginary, ideal day from some of the things we did in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore. Simon's may well be different but my perfect day would look something like this...
5am: Get up before the sun rises in
Louang Prabang, Laos to grab a Lao-style coffee and sandwich and watch the monks on their daily alms routes. Since Lounag Phabang has so many temples, at dawn the streets are always full of long trains of barefooted, bald-headed monks walking to and fro between them, accepting donations of food from the local people as they do.
7am: Head out into the sea around
Koh Tao, Thailand to complete our Open Water diving certificates. This took four days of practical and theoretical lessons and, on this final dive, we went to the maximum allowed depth of 18m, seeing rays, eels and huge numbers of tropical fish. Incredible.
11 30am: Just time to grap a quick
Singapore Slinger in
Raffles Hotel, Singapore. The original home of this cocktail was elegant, nostalgic and somewhat expensive. Definitely worth it though.
12pm: A quick lunch of fried rice wrapped in (and eaten off) a banana leaf before an elephant ride and bamboo rafting near
Chiang Mai, Thailand. Elephants are surprisingly big and unsurprisingly uncomfortable.
2pm: The perfect time to get out of the sun and head to the air-conditioned malls of
Bangkok. Even though we weren't really buying, just wandering around and watching the huge numbers of affluent Thai teenagers swarm around was interesting enough. Definitely a case of East meets West.
4pm: A perfect day wouldn't be complete without a trip to the beach - I'm going to disagree with Simon here and say that
Phanang beach, Railey, Thailand would be my choice for whiling away a couple of hours. White sand, crystal clear waters and spectacular surroundings.
6pm: Quickly, before the sunset, head up the KL Tower in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to watch it from 400m+ above the ground. With the setting sun in one direction, and the enormous, shining Petronas Twin Towers rising above the KL skyline in the other, this is probably the greatest view we've had so far.
8pm: Finally, head to
Koh Phangan, Thailand to spend the evening there. Dinner of a grilled, skewered fish, rice and chilli sauce from the excellent night market followed by the famous Full Moon Party - 20,000 people on one beach is quite a crowd.
Hopefully that provides a reasonable snap shot of what we've been up to. We really have crammed rather a lot in to our first eight weeks of traveling, most of it amazing and only a little of it less so (a 36 hour journey on crammed local Vietnamese buses, chickens et al, springs to mind...).
And so we arrive at the present, with me here in Bali and Simon in Australia. As I said at the top, I'm in Kuta, which is the biggest and brashest of the beach towns and probably more Australian than Indonesian. That said, it's very cheap and lot's of fun. The waves are also pretty good, I'm told, for beginners and so I've tried my hand at surfing, with mixed success - though I managed to stand up on the board almost straight away, I then promptly tore the nail off my big toe. Far from ideal.
I think that image is probably a good place to finish this first blog...please comment and let me know how it reads. I'm not really sure how a blog should be written, so it may take a few before the style is any good. Persevere with it, please!
Send my regards to England,
Chris
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Lorraine Botley
non-member comment
A perfect day ...
Hey Chris, a great account of a'perfect day'. We will look forward to reading your blog also - now we have twice the reason to be green with envy!! Bali sounds like its going to be great fun - it is the Australians holiday destination of choice so you may well meet more Aussies than Si! Enjoy and take care! Lorraine x