I Found Nemo! (he was in the anemone the whole time)

It's true folks... I found Nemo and his mates, and he was hanging around Koh Phi Phi in an anemone the whole time, not in some dentists office in Sydney as the movie would have you believe.

But wait! There's more! If you thought the news couldn't get any better than finding Nemo... it just did: I have finished my 'PADI Open Water Scuba Diving' course! Woo hoo!! I now have a licence to dive... up to a depth of 18m. I haven't felt such achievement since I got my drivers' licence, and similarly, am looking forward to going out and having fun with my new found freedom.

Tim and I are going to buddy up on a couple of fun dives tomorrow morning to Binah Nok and Binah Nai, which should be great. Another fab thing about diving is that it doesn't matter if it's raining, which is fortunate as that's what is forecast for tomorrow (again).

The day after, we are going back to Bangers before heading over to Cambodia. In case you were wondering, the current weather in Bangkok is hot, sunny and 33 degrees - but from Friday (for the next 3 days) there will be thunder showers. Once again, we are taking the weather with us. But as my good friend assured me, I'm getting in the practice for London.

Adios amigos.

It's A Tough Life, But Someone Has To Do It.

We are now on koh Phi Phi, the beautiful tropical island in the Andaman Sea made famous as the setting for the Hollywood film 'The Beach' (among other things).

It is hard to see much evidence of the tsunami on the main land andaman coast, but it's a different story here unfortunately. The main inhabited part of the island is wedged in between two cliff faces, and is no more than 4-5 metres above sea level, so when the tsunami hit it was channeled into and over the town.

The island has bounced back incredibly well, although there is evidence of construction in many places, and the damage caused is obvious. The people seem happy, and are getting on with life, but there must be a lot of grieving to be done still. Nearly everywhere you go it is the same story:

"Sorry, we are a bit under staffed"

"Why?"

"Half of them are dead".

On a lighter note though, we are having a great time. Traci is currently finishing off day two of her PADI Open Water diving certification, and we did to dives together today in Maya Bay (the picture to the left), and we are planning to go on a 2 night live aboard dive trip to some outlying islands where a group of manta rays are currently in residence. Hopefully we can get some pictures to post :)

Anyway, it's sunny today, so I think I have spent enough time in front of a computer.....

Hey Hey Were You Go?

We have been in Krabi for 5 nights now, well, we are actually in Ao Nang about 10ks away. It's a great place, and life is slipping past all to easily (which seems to happen in Thailand).

The boat trip from Koh Pha Ngang was pretty eventfull due to the stormy weather, but we made it off alive, and didn't even have to swim. Which was a big surprise to me!

I am constantly surprised with how friendly the Thai people can be. Since we have been here it has been constantly demonstrated to us.
On the first day here we hired a trail bike to expore the surrounding area. After getting no more than 2ks from town, the bike spluttered and then let out a loud electrical sounding crackle and finally a bang. Not good. I was already preparing myself for an argument with the bike hire place, and cursing about the prospect of pushing the bike back to town. Within 10 seconds two girls in a car, and a man and a child on a scooter had stopped to offer assistance. The guy on the scooter offered to push us into town, although I couldn't imagine how, but the Thais are inventive, and have an uncanny ability to ballance things on scooters. With Traci on the back, and his young boy on the front, he pushed me on the trail bike with his foot on the passenger foot rest of my bike. 1k down the road a pick up slowed behind us and started beeping for us to pull over. I didn't want to do this, expecting the usual Thai cry of Hey Hey Were You Go (followed by what ever vehicle they have to offer you a lift in: Tuk Tuk, Taxi, Bus, Boat etc etc) and a hefty charge to boot, but it turned out to be a guy from the bike shop, who appologised profusely, gave us a ride into town with the bike, and promptly swapped the bike for another one.

Which brings me to the title of this post.
Hey Hey Where You Go?
Tuk Tuk, Taxi
Hey Hey Where You Go?
Khao San, Airport
This should be the Thai national anthem, they all know it, and it is better than the one they have - sounds like a disney tune..... but hey, how can Australians poke fun at anyones national anthem?????

We should hang our heads in shame. Gurt by sea????

Diamond Geeza

We have left steamy Bangers, and travelled to Koh Pha Ngang, of full moon party fame, although, fortunately, there is much more to the place than just the party.
I have been to this island before, and on the last journey here we were transported by a “boat” which was more than a little frightening. I think that its owners had found it in a kinder surprise, or perhaps, more likely, made an inferior copy of a boat that came in a kinder surprise. To make matters worse, the sea was so rough that even the company who owned the boat was reluctant to set off. So, understandably, I was adamant that we would not end in the same predicament….. We did, and we didn’t. We ended up using the same company, but had a different boat. On the last journey, I sat on the deck, as I didn’t want to be inside the death trap when it sank, so we decided to do that again….. Not until we had been sitting in the sun for several hours did we notice that this boat had an air conditioned interior which sold cold beer. Oh well!
That aside, we are having a great time. We spent 2 nights on the north of the island, at a place called Mae hat (hat or had is Thai for beach). A beautiful place, if the beach wasn’t so dirty, and it wasn’t so expensive, or so far away from everything.



We decided to move, and went to visit the place I stayed at last time, Booms café bungalows. Unfortunately, there was building work going on so we didn’t want to stay there, so we had a quick look down the beach (we had to wade past some rocks to do this) and discovered Harmony Beach Resort. Not only was this place incredibly beautiful, but the room was better, and cheaper, and it was totally private and secluded – there is no road access, you have to walk through a nearby bungalow place and wade through the sea to get there. It is run by a South Londoner called Dave (it is a scientific fact that 50% of South Londoners are called Dave)





We went to the full moon party, but didn't end up staying all that long, and retuned back to our idyllic little spot to drink some buckets (there is no messing around here - they sell you a small plastic bucket full of ice, a 375ml bottle of spirits, a can of red bull and a can of coke… what a great take away).

And you can see why we returned :)

We have spent days just lounging around here. But soon we will be on our way.
It’s my birthday on Saturday, so we are going to hang around for that, and then it’s on to Krabi, Koh Phi Phi, and diving in the Similan islands.
Fortunately, our budget has been pretty much reined in, so we can afford to splurge again :)

Will Tim & Traci make it out of their dire predicament? Will dangerous Dave succeed in his dastardly plan of permanent beach settlement? Stay tuned for the next exciting installment, same flash time, same flash channel.

BTW: you can check out Harmony resort, or contact them at this address (thanks for that chester!): http://www.phangan.info/harmony/

In the Noodle

In the street infront of our guest house, there is a street vendor who makes a fantastic noodle soup with won tons, noodles, pork two ways, greens and crab garnish for 30 baht. He's a little old Thai man with few teeth but lots of character and we enjoyed his noodles so much, that last night we thought we'd buy him some beer.





Well, we ended up buying him 4 and collectively we proceeded to make a pretty good dent in the seven eleven's beer supply with about five people getting stuck into it around the table. When noodle man finished work we invited him over to sit and drink with us and he brought over his bottle of Thai rice whisky, and as we bought him beers he wanted to return the favour.



Now for some reason, no one else at the table wanted to have any of noodle man's whisky... so I took it upon myself to drink their collective share.


The last thing I remember is taking my shoes off to show noodle man my blister (to which he very kindly applied some ointment), which I am told was about half way through the night's antics. I woke up the next morning in the guest house in bed, and with half my belongings strewn across the room, half undressed and with no idea what had happened.

Ignorance is bliss. Tim filled me in on what happened later...

For starters, I drank a lot. I only remember drinking about 100ml of noodle man's whisky, but apparently I helped him polish off 3/4 of the bottle. Usually when I get really drunk and loose consciousness (not that often, Mum & Dad!), I would stop drinking. This did not happen.

So, I kept drinking until a the little safety switch in my head finally went off and I suddenly just walked off without my shoes or my bag. At least I walked out of there... one of the other backpackers had to be carried off (by Tim, bless him).

Poor noodle man was apparently so drunk he had real trouble packing up all his tables, chairs, condiments and cooking gear into the back of his ute and was in such a state that he slept in his car and didn't go home. I wonder what Mrs Noodle Man had to say about that!?

I won't bore you all with the details, but apparently when I was woken up by Tim once he arrived back at the guest house (after retrieving all my gear) I went completely mental. The poor people in the room next to us had to endure me yelling and throwing random things out of my backpack at the wall and generally being a complete nutter.

As we spoke very little Thai and noodle man spoke very little English, conversation was a bit stunted - but everyone knows the international signal of "you're shirking your drinking responsibilities". I guess peer pressure knows no language barriers.

Mae pen lai!! :)

Bangers & Flash

Well... We have arrived in Bangkok (Bangers), and are flashing it up in true flashpacker style :)
The daily budget of 900 Baht each (AU$30) is looking like a very unlikely dream at the moment!
We arrived at about 11:30pm, and caught a taxi, which proved to its astonished passengers that Einstein's special theory of relativity is in fact wrong..... It is possible for an object to travel faster than the speed of light (and not hit things..... just..... very, very, only just).
We found it so hard to explain the location of the guest house we wanted to the taxi driver, even after he called the farrang service (English Thai translation call centre), that we ended up staying on Khao San road - the backpackers’ ghetto. Fun for all the family! So the next morning we got up early, which wasn't hard as we didn’t sleep a wink (it’s hard on Khao San, but more on that later), and moved to Tavee Guest House, in the Thawet district. I cannot recommend this place enough, it’s a beautiful Thai style wooden house frequented by long term farrang residents on visa runs and life long travelers, 100m from the Chao Prya River, down a quiet, leafy Soi (side street).

Which brings me to why we didn't sleep..... Being back in Bangers is reviving long lost memories of traveling, like:

1. Roosters don't just crow in the morning as the myth suggests, they do it all night, right outside our window by the sound of it. And that sets to dogs off..... And there are a lot of dogs in Bangers (well, the whole of Thailand really).
2. Khao San road is a hole... a hole filled with drunken wankers with Thai "girlfriends", rip off artists, people who think getting their hair braided is cool, roosters, dogs, dog shit, and all night bars.
3. The amazing toilet shower: A large toilet cubicle with a shower at one end. Now I didn't forget about these, and don't particularly have anything against them (they work really well, you can use the shower to spray the cubicle off if it's dirty etc etc), but I did forget all the usage tips I found out last time I was here: put the toilet seat down first, as things can fall down the toilet easily (note to self: buy new towel), and make sure your clothes are hung up properly or they will fall on the toilet floor (yum).

Bitching aside, I am having a great time. We have done most of our chores (bought supplies, got injections etc), so now we are free to travel down to the islands, or wherever we like. We also met a couple of travelers at Tavee (Cataline;Belgium and Mike;Canada) who live in Thailand (in Kanchanaburi – where the bridge over the River Kwai is) who have invited us to their place for a couple of days.

Basically we are having a ball. Its sunny and hot, the food is great and cheap, and so is the beer (which is sold everywhere), and we soon be kicking back on a tropical paradise island.