Beaches, beaches and MORE beaches...

So this is kind of like the last leg of our trip.. before we meet up with our friends and family in Malaysia and Hong Kong...

We decided it was time to just chill, and go beaching for the rest of the month before Singapore (to meet Kee's aunt) and Malaysia (for Howei's wedding). The plan is to travel the Adaman Coast (Phuket, Krabi and Phi Phi areas) - in fact it was just decided today, after hearing about the hurrucaine on the East coast - ruling out Koh Sumui and Phang Ngan (where all the hardcore travellers hang out).

We're staying on Karon Beach in Phuket and its semi-quiet little town - away form the rowdiness of Patong beach (where all the bars, prostitutes and hooligans hang out!). Everyone here is getting ready for the Loy Krathong festival (tonight)- Festival of light. The festival takes place on the full moon in November. Locals make Karothongs (like a flower boat), with incense or candle stuck in the middle, a wish is made, then the Kathongs are floated down a canal. The ceremony is said to bring good luck, washing away all the bad. It's also said that if a couple each float a Krathong down the canal and they remain floating together, this represents they're relationship - so yep - me n kee have both bought Krathongs and will be "testing the waters" tonight!

Lazy blogger...

Ok - I've been REALLY lazy with my blogging - so here's a long one to make up for it! I think i'll split this in 2 parts....

Chiang Mai - gosh this seems like it was time ago when we were in Chiang Mai, but in fact it was last week! We decided to cut the Chiang Mai trip short as we had kinda had enough of trekking and seeing villages and cities. Orginally, we booked a 3 day course at an Elephant conservation centre - where you learn to be a Mahout (elephant trainer). Sounds like a strange thing to do, but I just find it fascinating how such giant creatures can be so obidient and tame! Unfortunately... we were told lat minute that the training course was booked up! So waste no further time, instead of waiting for the next available space we decided to make a trip to teh conservation for a 1 day tour instead.

Here, the elephants are trained to carry logs for building and constuctction work in the villages. We watched a show where elephants demonstrated this, they also learn how paint - and these pictures can be sold for up to $US 20,000!!! But its all in aid of preserving this excellent conservation. The place also houses two elephant hospitals where injured and neglected elephants are kept. It was so sad to see some of their injuries - quite a few had their feet blown off from land mines and 1 had his trunk chopped off from working in the forest... however, it was very reassuring to see that they were well-cared for at the conservation. They also had some REALLLLLY cute baby elephants that were playing with their mum, one was so active he tried to climb over the gate to play with me!! Funniest thing was when he got his leg stuck whilst trying (we have this on video!!).

Day after we went for a Thai cooking course... no, this does not mean i will be cooking Thai food for everyone as soon as I get back... you just don 't know how much back-breaking work goes into making a curry!!! So anyway, after this course, I could probably get by making a Thai fried rice, and fried bananas - the easy ones. The spring rolls with glass noodles were GORGEOUS! But again, takes a little time and lots of oil to make...however, i will attempt to make a proper curry ONE DAY!! In the meantime I'd stick to curry paste from a jar!

So after spending just 10 days in Chiang Mai we headed back to Bangkok - en route to Phuket. We spent 2 days in Bangkok shopping, and I finally found a dress to wear for Ewei's wedding! So now I've got one less thing to worry about!

Roughin' it tribal style!

We're in Chiang Mai! Its a pretty buzzing place - not as busy as Bangkok, which is comforting!

Been on a couple of trips so far - first was a visit to the Golden Triangle. This is where three countries - Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet - its pretty cool cos you just stand at the viewing point and you see all three countries surrounding this one long river!

Last night we got back from a 2D 1N trekking trip around Se Meong (think thats what the place was called - our guide wasn't very good at telling us where we were going!). There were 11 of us, firstly all squashed up in a small pick-up truck travelling to the trekking point. The first day trek was pretty boring - just straight roads and some rice fields. We arrived in a Karen (a hill-tribe) village after about 3-4 hours, and the first thing we did was grab BEERS! It turned into quite a fun and cheesy night - drinking, singing by the camp fire, and playing truth! We stayed the night in a big hut, and as you can imagine, no shower and pothole toilets meant that it was a pretty uncomfortable and skanky night for me! I could barely sleep cos my clothes were all sweaty and all i could think about was going to the toilet - but i was a little scared cos it was pitch black outside, and i really didn't want the mozzies biting at my bum!!

It was a bad idea for all of us to be drinking cos the 2nd day was a mega-hardcore trek! We thought that it was gonna be an easy day just riding on elephants and rafting, but NO, we had about 5-6 hours SOLID walking up hills and down slippery rocky roads (witha 1 hour elephant ride in between)! Woke up at 7am, had brekkie then started the trek about 9am and didn't get to rest for lunch til 2pm!!!!! It was hell! We were also promised a nice waterfall to bathe in, but really, it was barely a pond with mirky water - though the actuak waterfall wasn't too bad - we just didn't have anywhere to bathe! So onwards we had to go for another hour, still in our manky, sweaty clothes, feeling like shit, till we got to our final stop - the river bamboo rafts! I must say that this was teh best part of the trip - sitting on these dodgy bamboo rafts and floting along a mild river rapid! Seriously good fun!

Ok so most of the trip was rather hard for me, but looking back it was actually a pretty cool experience...that I would never do EVER again!! However, if you do ever come to Chiang Mai - I would reccomend this trip just for the experience of roughin' it!

Miniature Thai buildings, massages, ghosts and shit..

Ahhh... just had a super full one and half hour body aromatherapy massage!! Great reccommendation from Anita's luvly mummy - who certainly knows what luxury is!!

Back in Banagkok we stayed with Anita in her aunt's home. Was great to experierence a real Thai family life - LOTS of eating, shopping and having chats with the family! We were made to feel really welcome and Anita's mum couldn't have been more helpful - planning our days out and even our breakfast! We love your mummy Anita!!

We went to the Ancient city, which is suppose to a park laid out with miniature size Thailand landmarks. At first, I thought this place would be something like legoland or the miniature world in Macau - but no! Ancient city so much bigger and better! So big in fact, that you have to ride a bike or drive around the park. You also get go inside the buildings, which are either built to scale or 2:1. There no such thing as lack of detail - the temples were ornate, traditional Thai house filled with antique furniture and real life people actually working, and what looked like, living in the little houses! I couldn't reccomend this place more to everyone!

After we went to ANOTHER croc farm and watched crazy Thai park rangers stick their hands and heads in crocs' mouths.... scarey shit!

Anita also took us to watch The Grudge....bad idea.... all three of us were peeing our pants - it was so scarey that we barely watched the whole film - 75% of the time we were covering our eyes - literally every 5-10 minutes it was a shit-scarey scene with scarey music and sounds to make it worse! Never again will i watch a Japanese-produced/directed horror movie!!! If i dodn't have my eyes covered for that movie, i swear I'd be having nighmares for the rest of my trip - i mean, i was even thinking about one of the ghosts whilst i was having my massage!!


Anyways tomorrow we're off to Chiang Mai - for 2 weeks of trekking, learning about elephants and Thai cooking!

Back to sun, sand, sea, and friendly aussies!

Back in Cairns finally! I was actually really missing this place - in a way I wish we're staying here longer cos I wanna explore this area more and do some more serious diving .... :'(

Although i enjoyed our tours and our eating around sydney with our guide Lisa (:P) we couldn't escape from the misery of cloudy grey skys and the cold!! Another thing that's not so good about Sydney is that the people are quite rude and a little arrogant... not as smiley as the Queenslanders!

Still we had a great time meeting up with Terence and meeting his cute girlfriend, Joanne - she talks like a cartoon character - makes you wanna give her a big hug and squeeze her cheeks - so swweet!! Did some cool stuff - we had an evening BBQ on Lisa's roof terrace, drove around the Blue Mountains and explored the Janolan caves - really beautiful! And the perfect way to end our holiday in Sydney with scrummy pancakes and crepes at this cool pancake house that Terence took us to! Thanks mate!

Well, we're flying again tomo - to Bangkok and meeting Anita! Yey! Really looking forward to meeting up, eating again and loads of shopping!! kakakaka!