Chiang Mai

Beautiful, lovely Chiang Mai.

It is a lovely walled city with a moat. I kid you not and on Sundays there is the Sunday Walking Market and all the nights of the week there is a night bazaar. I decided in Bangkok that I hate shopping but I love browsing so it is all good.

We hopped of the train and onto the back of a truck and went directly to Awana sleep and swim. For 600 baht we have a lovely room, like really nice. The swim is more of a paddle but that is ok. We are a small stroll from the moat and the Thae Pae Gate. We spent the first day wandering about and seeing what the town was like. We arrived on a Sunday so we had a look at the Sunday market. We went for food and then went in search of a bar. We ended up in a rock bar with a cover band made up of the bar owner, his son and a guy in his late fifties playing lead guitar, wearing leathers and a wig of curly hair. There also seemed to be a large gang of urban cowboys, hats ‘n’ all! We chilled there for the evening, drinking rice whiskey and cheering on the band.

The next day we decided to book a jungle trek. We looked at our options and booked a two day/one night trek at a cost of 1400 baht each. We met with one of the guides that evening, Mr. Ku, and he answered some of our questions and lent us small backpacks. So we chilled at a Muay Thai match, ate and packed that evening. The Muay Thai night was mad. It looked like a lot of hugging and kicking to me during the earlier pairings and the first ladies match was very poor. but as the skill level increased the matches became more interesting. There was even a fun match where 4 boxers were placed in the ring, blindfolded and one of their trainers was placed in there without a blindfold. The whole purpose was for the boxers to take swings and kicks if they felt anyone near them, even if it was the trainer. The trainer would just randomly come up and thump them or spin them around or something. There seemed to be a good friendship between all of the boxers and the hung about the stadium afterwards chatting to people.

The next morning we hopped into the back of the van with Sabrina and Stefane from Belgium, Bonnie and Dominic from Germany and Ibrahim from Turkey and our guide, Tim. We went first to a market so Tim could buy our dinner and breakfast and then we headed to a small village for a lunch of fried rice and fruit. We then started our 3 hour jungle trek to the river village of the Lahu people.

We were shattered and sweaty when we got there let me tell you. We knew we would be staying in huts but it did not occurred to me that there would be no electricity. The place we stayed was right over the river and was made of bamboo and wood. The owner was not Lahu but was Akha and was a very happy lady. We were told that there were about 50 families in the village and that it is only accessible by the track we used or the river. The nearest school was 6km away and many of the children stayed in the school during the week. The tribes’ people marry very young, from about 15, and one of our assistant guides told us he is 17, married and his wife was expecting a baby.

Some of us went for a swim in the river to wash off some of the sweat and then waited for dinner as we were wrecked.

Dinner was cooked over an open fire in one of the huts but was lovely.

Our guide brought out a guitar and a sing song ensued. I went to bed before it finished but Ter and some of the men stayed up and had a few beers.

It was kinda cool going to bed by candle light in our groups hut but we were basically on thin bedrolls with thin blankets and it was actually cold.

I got very little sleep because of loud rain and was not appreciative of the gang of cockerels that started their dawn chorus at 4am. Ter slept quite well after his beers.

While we had our breakfast of boiled eggs and toast we watched our bamboo raft being constructed. We then went on an elephant trek on Thai elephants. They are smaller tan Indian and African elephants. Apparently the Lisu are the people with the best voodoo to control the elephants. The trek was a little scary for me at times because 1. We were going under low lying trees; they contain large insects and 2. The track was steep at points and elephants can slip, apparently. I would just like to assure you that Terry is both a good seatbelt and insect hunter ;)

The elephant kept stopping to eat and at one point tried to fell a tree!

We then changed and put our bags into plastic bags for the bamboo rafting trip. We have no pictures of this as the likelihood of the raft tipping and us losing our camera was high.

The three men had to assist the skipper by using poles of bamboo to help steer the raft. Us ladies sat down. We had to get off and walk at one point as the rapids were too dangerous for us ladies!

All of the men folk were overboard at one point or another. We all got soaked as the raft was often so far under water that I was mid-chest in the river. Fun! We did not tip over but we were all looking forward to a shower!

Ter and I went to a shopping centre that evening and went to the Pizza company chain, which do very good pizza. We then went to see Eagle Eye which was alright, defo better than Bangkok dangerous. We got a bit lost getting back out onto the street and were feeling a bit vulnerable on the side of the road with no public transport appearing but after ten minutes a truck arrived, woohoo.

We have been to the night market a few times. It is good but huge with a good few food options including the usual McDonalds, Subway and Burger King.

Ter - So siobs not feeling well today but she still soldiered on and went to a massage course she’s been dying to do since she read it in a book before we left. While she was doing that I had a stroll around the old town, more wats, heat and sweat. I ditched the walking tour plan and went for an iced coffee instead. Reading a book and listening to my iPod – reminded me of college – similar circumstance too, nothing to do but waste time. I gave in to the wife’s demands of shaving but I got some Thai lady to do the honors – it was a pretty poor job but I got a haircut as well for 200baht so not too bad – no photos yet but keep an eye out for the new look – its exactly what I asked for ‘A haircut’ nothing fancy. I spent the latter half of the wait drinking a beer watching the world go by while trying to get a wooden cube back together stoopid wooden puzzle beat me but not until I had missed Siobhan walking by to meet me back at the hotel. I caught up with her twenty minutes later when she walked back towards the message place.

As Ter wrote I did a Thai reflexology course, which is actually just foot massage, but I enjoyed it. Ter got a hair cut and a very poor shave. It was very bad; he had a lot of hair on his face. When Terry did not turn up at the hotel I was, of course, as cool as a cucumber. I was calmly wondering how long I could reasonably leave it to start calling hospitals! I was not feeling very well so we went and had great burgers in Mikes and then headed to a bar so Ter could have a beer.

We ended up playing pool with sisters Bim and Bam and then going to a brilliant Reggae club with them! On the way we passed a cart selling fried insects. Terry had a mixed platter while I tried not to heave. Apparently they are lovely as long as you do not mind tentacles between your teeth. We eventually decided to go home as we had an early start for rock climbing in the morning!!!

We did not go rock climbing in the morning, I was not hung over but I was still unwell. Terry, however, hugged the loo bowl for a small while.

We had another lie in and then went to pizza hut. It was really poor. If you are ever making the choice between pizza hut and Pizza Company I advise Pizza Company all the way. We went to The Zohan, which is only ok. I feel like a student but I love being able to go to the cinema whenever.

We then went on an impromptu shopping trip and bought a couple of bits for our gaff!

We are doing a lot of strolling about the city and chilling, tis lovely.

We met with Bim and went to the lake with her. It is actually a reservoir with lots of open huts around it. Thai people go swimming there and spend the day there chilling, eating and having a few beers. We went to the bar for a few drinks and then strolled about the night market. I was not feeling well I went home and Ter went for a beer.

Bim brought us to Doi Suthep and we wandered about the grounds for a while. Then Bim brought us to a restaurant that she used to work in that mainly serves vegetarian and organic food. I was stilling feeling a bit unwell so I decided to go to the doctor for a blood test. I went to a local clinic and it was really good but I had to wait about two and a half hours to see the doctor and come back the next day with a sample. Everything was perfect and it only cost350 baht including the lab results, which only took an hour.

The next day we decided to head to Ko Tao.

From Our Koh Chang Thai Cooking School Experience - part 1

Phad Thai – for 2 people

Sauce

1/3 cup coconut sugar or brown sugar

3 tablespoons fish sauce

3 tablespoons tamarind sauce (o 2 ½ white vinegar)

2 tablespoons chili sauce

Ingredients

5-6 tablespoons vegetable oil

5-6 tablespoons chopped shallot

4 tablespoons hard tofu

2 teaspoons dried shrimp

4 teaspoons chopped pickled white radish

8 fresh shrimp or 2 fresh chicken breasts chopped

2 eggs beaten well

Rice noodles or vermicelli

8-10 tablespoons Phad Thai sauce

½ cup Chinese chives

1 cup bean sprouts

Steps (tip- keep everything moving once in the pan over a medium to high temperature)

1. Heat oil in a wok until hot, add chopped shallot. Fry until fragrant
2. Add tofu, dried shrimp and white radish
3. Add meat, cook until done and set aside on pan
4. Add eggs (to empty side of pan) move all cooked ingredients on top of the egg, wait until egg gets firm and flip over
5. Add noodles
6. Add Phad Thai sauce and mix everything well
7. Add chili powder to own taste
8. Add bean sprouts and chives. Mix everything well
9. Serve with a lime wedge (if shrimp), crushed peanuts, fresh chives and trimmed bean sprouts

The night train.

The night train song is in my head as I type. Was that back from the Rocco days?
It was a compact space with bunks, a sink, a table and air-con.
I got the top bunk.
There was no wifi for our new toy!
The train left at 7.35pm and we were on board with a few bevies!
We chilled, had a few beer chang and brezzers and ate train food.
I took a sleeping tablet a slept like a log. The train was only an hour and a half late, so not too bad.

bangkok 2

So, Bangkok 2 was good. We found a nice guest house called Thara which is in a nice area and only five minutes from the night life.
We arrived in early evening and checked into the guest house which was 500 baht a night, which is about ten euro.
We headed to the Khao San for food and beverages and ended up hanging out with Sean from California, whose dad is from Cork, and the gang he had gathered.
The next day we went for a stroll to the grand palace and Wat po. We stopped at a map and were told by a tourist officer that we should consider hiring a tuk-tuk driver for 20 baht and head to Wat in for the tall Buddha, troyal, Wat saket and then back to the grand palace. So we hired a tuk-tuk driver and all was going well until we were mad go to a “tourist office” and then he tried to bring us to another “sponsors” house so we paid up at Wat saket and once again did not make it to the grand palace so we headed to MBK shopping centre, ate, bought a mini notebook and went to see Bangkok dangerous which is a shite film and a waste of everyone’s time and money. Once again Nicholas Cage is a baddie with soul or whatever.
The following day we sorted out the night train to Chiang Mai. We booked a first class sleeper cabin for 28 euro a night.
Then we went to see the reclining Buddha, emerald Buddha and the grand palace and we actually made it there, woohoo. I of course thought the emerald Buddha, which is actually jade, would be bigger. It was teeney but lovely.
All of the wats are so peaceful that it makes a nice change from the general pace of Bangkok.
We headed back to our accommodation and headed to the night train to Chiang Mai.

StarTer its a new kinda fish..

This pic needed its own post - its from the boat trip in boracay.

Ko Chiang

A 6 hour bus journey brought us to Trat bus station. i throughly enjoyed the journey watching Thai soap operas and depressing love song Karaoke.
We stopped at a rest stop on the way and i used a squat toilet successfully! Go me, Terry was very proud, as you can imagine.
we then had a one hour sawngthaew journey to the ferry port, followed by a one hour ferry journey followed by another one hour sawngthaew journey to Nature Resort on lonely beach. i was starving and a little cranky at this stage.
we stayed in one of nature beach huts that night and moved down the beach to siam huts for the rest of our trip. Nature Beach resort is more fun and has better food but had no air-con huts available and i was afraid of the possibility of cockroaches.
our current hut is 400 baht a night which works out at about 8 euro a night.
we rented a wee bike for 2 days which only cost 6 euro for the two days but cut out on steep hills, that i then had to walk up. lovely stuff.
we went spinning around the island the first day and got hit on the head by very large insects. especially poor terry. i am not sure his head will ever be the same again!
Terry chilled on the beach and enjoyed swimming while i had a nap. as he decided to air dry before reapplying sunscreen he now has a lovely red colour on his face and chest. he is lovely and warm.
yesterday afternoon we did a cookery course in one of the most stunning settings. i forgot the to bring the little booklet we got but we cooked pad thai, two kinds of soup, curry and sticky rice with mango and ate it overlooking a lagoon watching the sunset. i will put up the website for the school later but big thanks to Nam for such a lovely afternoon.
we have spent the evenings chilling with sue, Chrissie and Johannes at nature resort drinking big beer Chang and watching the fire show.
today we are chilling and catching up on e-mails and stuff.
some of my skin has gone blue from the sarong i was wearing yesterday. and i am having difficulty washing it off. also, i am not as prepared for roughing it as i was a few years ago, but apparently i have to get over it!
thats it really. it is a beautiful island. i am not sure about the rest of Thailand but Neasa and Laura would love Ko Chiang for the shopping and lovely resorts but would laura would hate all the cats and Neasa would hate all of the dogs.
Love ye all. talk soon.

Bangkok 1.

So we had two nights and one day in Bangkok. We decided not to stay too long as we figured we would be in and out a few times. We spent far too much money on our hotel but I do not care!
we went to the weekend market on the Saturday and spent most of the day wandering about and trying some of the food. It was lovely and well worth a visit.
click for more pics
We then tried to go to the grand palace on a tuk-tuk. This proved difficult as the tuk-tuk drivers always want to bring tourists to the places that they are linked to. So we gave up and wandered about Chinatown instead.
We had a couple of Sang Som Buckets on Th Khao San with a few people we met, Kit, Stephanie and Caitlin.
We got the bus and Ferry to Ko Chiang the next day.
I think everyone we know would like Bangkok, if only for the shopping. However, it seems quite difficult to get around as it is so vast. I am looking forward to seeing more of it.

Boracay-tis great.

so we have been in Boracay much longer than anticiapated but we have had a great time.
Boracay is this little island with great beaches, nightlife and water sports.
We are staying at a hotel called Alice, which is nice and insulating because it has air-con, a TV and an en-suite.
we spent the first few days sleeping and eating and barely saw anything, mainly because i was wrecked.
We started spending happy hour in a bar called nigi nigi noo noo's where we ended up meeting this gang of lovely people.
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we hung out with them most nights, as you will see from the photos. we totally reccommend Nigi's and a nightcllub called Guillys.
i also totally reccommend, for food, Manana, Big Yellow Taxi, Villa Oro Mongolian Barbeque and a spanish place across from our hotel that i cannot reember the name of.
we also highly reccommend the two bar men, Nolly and Lito, in the bar.
so we rented quads and did a small tour of the island with this couple called jocelyn and Joel.
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Jocelyn had never driven anything before so it was great that when her quad tipped over she just got right back on and kept on going. we went to a butterfly and bat farm where the other 3 held a bat. eurgh! and we wnet to a view point.
terry and i did a kite surfing lesson with Isla Kite surfing, which we really enjoyed but it was really hard.
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we got no where near a board! the kite was really hard to control and we had to do the lesson over two days because of rain. Ter would hold me on the earth when i was learning how to control the kite and i was supposed to hold terry down. it really worked! i lost my grip on terry every time. he got some miner air.
click for more pics
Terry did his advanced open water diving course. this involved 5 particular areas with 5 dives. he did navigation, buoancy, deep dive, night dive and wreck diving i think. he can add a bit about that. he was delighted with it. he did it with Sue at Calypso diving.
i chilled while he was doing his dives. i went to the viewing point with some of the people we had met for sunset. it was cool there were about ten of us between 2 tricycles and at one stage we had to get off and walk so it would make it up the hill.
yesterday we went on an Island hopping tour with Marie and Mairead. they had the best seats in the house! they were soaked the entire time we were out. it was a nice tour with a good lunch and was good value for money except for the bogus environmental fee people were asked to pay if they went snorkelling at crocodile island.
Today Terry is at a cock fight with JC. JC's family has the best fighter cocl apprently but it is not fighting today.
i went in search of a leg wax and found instead a hygienically challenged ladyboy called Vanessa. suffice to say i am still a hairy lady. Unlike Vanessa.
i would totally reccommend Boracay, although haggeling is important.
Terry will put up the photos later and talk about the dives and the cock fight i am sure!
click for more pics
be sure to look at the photos of our new buds, we had a great time with them.

Cebu - Moalboal - and 2 new divers in the Padi club

We learned to dive @ http://www.savedra.com/

So, i was a bit panicked when we landed in Cebu and drove to Moalboal. partly because i was having a little bit of anxiety about the whole undertaking and partly because we were driving past a shanty town. But we got to Moalboal and signed up for an open water padi course. the course occupied all of our time in Maolboal. Terry loved it but i am a bit afraid of floating of into the deepblue yonder.
i only dived to 12 meters and terry went to the full 18.
the cool bits were seeing turtles and nemo. we also saw dolphins frolicking while we were having breakfast.
Our diving instructor was Dino and he was very very patient. we were lucky that it was just two of us doing the open water course. we also met a girl called grace from Devon and a mad irish girl called siobhan who was doing her rescue diver course.
in the evenings after diving one of the lads would buy beer and we would all have a few bevies together which was cool.
we were invited to stay for the opening of a new dive shop but decided i would not be able to handle the slaughtering of the goat.
we landed on the resort island of Boracay today and will probably spend a week here. not sure where we are moving to next. we have not done any videoke....yet! we promise the photos will be put on soon.


and here they are..
click on the pic for more

Hong Kong

So we landed in Hong Kong and got our passports stamped at the visa desk and got on the MTR to Hong Kong central.
The first views from the train were thrilling, all greenery and skyscrapers.
click on the pic for more
It was beautiful. When we got to HK we took a taxi to Repulse Bay Road to the people we were staying with.
My aunt lived in HK for a while and we were staying with her friends, Jo and Mike and their children. Their apartment was lovely and they are a lovely couple. They had guidebooks for us and octopus cards and even mobiles if we wanted them.
Jo and Mike were at work when we arrived so we dropped our bags and headed to Stanley market. We got on one of the buses and had not gotten far when I felt sick and had to get off and managed to be very sick at the side of the road. At the time I blamed the airplane breakfast but on reflection it was the anti-malarials. So we walked the rest of the way to the market. I thought it was about 25 degrees. It was not.
The market is vast and full of clothes and nick knacks. It is attached to a lovely pier. We did not buy anything but soaked up the atmosphere.
We had a stroll around the market and went for a tea and then hopped on a bus to repulse Bay beach. We had noodles at a stall on the beach and then went for a paddle in the water. The beach itself is pretty, with trees growing all over it but the water was manky, so we sat under a tree for a while trying to fight the need to sleep. A sign on the beach indicated that the actual temperature was 37 degrees. No wonder we were sweating!
We strolled back to the apartment and continued to try and fight the sleep. We hung out a bit with the kids and wrestled toys from the dog. We had lovely barbequed steaks with Jo and Mike and then we gave in to the sleep.
On Thursday, after a relaxed breakfast we got the bus to central and had a stroll about, eventually wandering over to the funicular tram.
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We got the tram to Victoria Peak and enjoyed the amazing view. I was able to the house my aunty Lu and her family lived in when they were in Hong Kong.
The tram up is fairly cool and is well worth it.
We then got the escalator to the mid levels, after a quick stop at China Bank. I tell a lie terry went the whole way but I stopped and had a cup often. The escalators only go one way!
We got the ferry to Kowloon and strolled about the Jade Market and the Ladies Market where I bargained down a daypack from HK$800 to 400. I was delighted but was later told I should try and get the price down by 2/3's.
Friday we went to Lantau and got the bus to Tian Tan Buddha, which is said to be the biggest seated, bronze Buddha in the world. We had a look around the Po Lin Monastery first and then climbed the 260 up to see the bronze Buddha at the top. I had to take a rest half way and then have an ice cream at the top.
This is the best bit, we got a cable car down to the MTR, and when I say down I mean down. It was very high up and a 25-minute cable car ride down.
We went out that night with Jo and Mike and their friends, first to Red Bar and then to lan kwai fong which is the place for expats to go drinking. I was wrecked so I was on vodka/redbulls. It was a great night and a bit difficult to get up this morning.
We went to causeway bay and got a little bit lost and had a look about the shops today.
Things that amazed me about Hong Kong:
It is really green.
Most people do not wear facemasks.
The public transport system is excellent and really cheap.
In central all of the shops are designer stores so they are really expensive but the shopping centers are a lovely break from the heat.
It would be a good destination for a city break if you could cope with the jet lag.