Bangkok

Today we had a very good day. After a breakfast at the hostel, which was included in the stay, and had a toast with a smiley face imprinted into it....there's really no other way to start the day...we took a short walk down to the river. It's a big river and it's very brown. On the way back, we were looking undecidedly at a laneway thinking it could be a shortcut. A guy walking past must have read our mind. "Yeah, you can walk down there". At the end of the lane, I was still getting my bearings and found the hostel directly in front of me. A rare occasion when a go at a shortcut actually turns out to be shorter than the other options.

We came back and chatted to a couple of girls from Austria. When I was reading about some of these scams that are renowned in Thailand, I said to myself "is anyone really dumb enough to fall for these tricks"?

So I asked the girls what they got up to. "Yesterday we went with a rickshaw driver, he took us on this tour for 10 baht (about 30c), and first he took us to a travel agent, then to a jewellery shop, after the third place we made him bring us back to the hostel". C'mon girls, that one is the oldest trick in the book....I guess they must be pretty young though as they said it's there first big trick. No harm done to them though anyway, it was just a learning experience that everyone, particularly those that drive rickshaws, is not out to give you a good deal.

We were lucky, as we had our local "tour guides" come and pick us up. No rickshaws, taxis, buses, trains, planes etc. Just airconditioned comfort and we headed north.

After driving out of the city limits, we stopped at an area where they have some seafood restaurants. We got a huge variety of food, which they said was less than usual. There was a little bit of everything, shrimps, crab omelette, a Tom Yum soup with shrimp inside, a big fish, rice, vegetables, the works. We left there with full tummies.

We got fairly sick in India and our eating habits on the trip have changed since then. We have really been eating only one big meal and then some smaller snacks throughout the day, but that's not the way in Thailand. More on that later.

From there we went to a couple of tourist locations. First was the Bang Pa-In Palace. I linked to the wiki article which tells me it's only used occasionally by the current royals, but it's a very nice place, with temples, gardens and lots of other features inside. One of the gardens is a collection of hedges in animal shapes.

Awesome.

We stopped in at a temple next, which had a big load of stairs leading up to. With the condition of our ankles it was probably a mistake to head up there, but there was a good view at the top. Not really worth coming to the temple and not actually entering it.

It was getting to about 6pm and our next stop was Sun's old uni, where every Monday and Thursday they have a night market. And it's not just a small market. You wouldn't see me back at UC for the Wednesday market day, I'll put it that way. Anyway, I don't like markets that much, so it would be likely for me to do something like to fake an injury to skip out of the markets.

However there was no faking, my ankle and foot were hurting significantly, so it was time to sit down. The gang gathered up some more food, though I wasn't too hungry. That didn't concern them..."it's 7 o'clock, it's time to eat!" Even though we hadn't actually finished our lunch until about 2pm.

Tomorrow we're going to go to the doctor. I have a lot of bruising on my foot, and Francisca's ankle has swollen up a bit. She also has a cough that hasn't rested since we were in India. So let's see how that goes. We've got one more night booked in here, but then I think they are booked out for a couple of weeks, so we will have to move on to some coastal paradise.

After tomorrow I will spend most of the day resting so I will try and add some more pictures to this blog. I also start back on my uni course next week. My subjects are "Online Writing" and "Writing and New Media", so I might talk about that a bit in here.

It's good that I can be in Thailand and still "get it done"

Stage One: Complete (almost)

Flight Depart Arrive Depart Date D72516 Kuala Lumpur (KUL) Mumbai (BOM) Fri, Aug 5 18:05

So today we will move on to the next stage of our travels. We really have only a vague plan for India and not really too much time to do it in, but it will be an interesting experience. We are starting out from Mumbai and will work our way North up until Nepal, then we fly from Kathmandu to Thailand.

I know we will spend plenty of time on trains, which is really what I imagine from a trip to India, just sitting along, watching the scenes pass by.

Today I read about a couple or record stores in Malaysia, and two were in the same shopping centre. I went there and unfortunately they were both closed. However, one "Campbell's Music Centre" had this poster on the wall

A good album that one, too.

So I continued walking and I came to Bukit Nannas (City Forest)

From near the train station you can disappear into some bushlands, which is for one much cooler, and makes the city seem miles away. There are tracks that can take you right through to the KL Tower as well.

The paths are very well made too, and there are plenty of options to choose from. Now it's time to pack up our things and move on to the next stage of our trip.

The third and final change will be Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam before we return to Australia, then almost immediately begin a new adventure in Chile.

Kuala Lumpur

So we are onto our second day in KL, yesterday was really just the whole process of getting here and arriving, we didn't do too much more after that. We did see a lot of people with the yellow shirt of the national soccer team, I read in a paper this morning that they had a draw with Singapore, 1-1, meaning they lost on aggregate and are already out of calculations for the World Cup, which is on in a few years...

We are staying in a place called the Step Inn Guest house. We have our own room, a twin. It's ok, pretty basic, although we do have free wi fi. An interesting section is the bathroom (all shared), and you can find that the toilet and the shower are within the same cubicle....there is also the option to use another shower, which has one option, of cold. It's about 30 degrees most days, so that was the option for me.

Today we started reasonably early, with a plan of walking around. The man behind reception had given us a very detailed map and some good advice on where to go. Conveniently, we left that behind at dinner last night.

I have been to KL a couple of times now. Last year was my first visit, I had a couple of days on the way to London. Then as a matter of fact, only a few weeks ago I was here for the first ever Malaysian Footbag Championships. The links will take you to what I wrote about the previous visits. The first one on this here blog, and the second on the Shred Global footbag website.

Last night was pretty low key, by the time we arrived we were pretty exhausted, we just got some dinner not too far away then were in bed not too long after that. This morning we were up pretty early and made our way to the KL Tower. Once they let us know of the 45 RM fee, we were heading back down. The worst thing is the fact that you can't just buy the ticket for the viewing deck. I had been there before, so I could probably just bring out a picture from my previous visit....maybe I can do that later.

Here's the tower in question. It was pretty wet this morning, but of course it would be warm compared to the -8 we would have been suffering in back in Canberra. We wandered back down from the tower and given the fact you could eat about 10 dinners for the price of entrance for two, that was a good move at the beginning of the day.

We had a bit of a wander along and soon enough we were below the Petronas Towers. Francisca, an architect by trade in the past didn't like them at all, she said they were "too 90s". I was kicking around the footbag while waiting for something, and hit the tricky blurry whirl....this may become a feature of the trip....5 add tricks hit in front of famous locations??? However we're going around for a couple of months and it wouldn't be too long until I ran out of tricks at that level.

Anyway, from the Petronas we wandered in no particular direction, but it turned out the direction was heading off the edge of our map. It was only really a map of the central area of the city, but we stopped for a while at the National Art Gallery, had a look at some art, drank a freshly squeezed orange juice and then got back on the road again.

We also saw a cow....

Seeing cows in Canberra, that's not too surprising, and seeing the sacred cow in India won't be surprising at all, but in KL a pretty big city, I didn't really expect to see any cows....

After passing the edge of our map, we jumped onto the monorail, which was completely packed and headed to the other end of the line, KL Sentral. This was also the other end of the map, which we soon passed through into the Brickfields or Little India area. We ended up eating at a place called Gandhi's, a vegetarian buffet. The food was quite good and it was pretty cheap for a good sized serve.

We wandered in this area for a while, and seemed to just keep on going in circles. We were planning to walk back into the centre of town, but that was hard to do as we weren't really going anywhere. We got back onto the monorail to get us back into the thick of things, and now we are taking a rest back at the hostel, and will probably go down to the chinatown area once we are feeling rested.

When does the holiday begin?

Well technically it has begun already. On Friday I packed it in from the place I've worked for more than 3 years, then had a good party with friends from a pretty good spectrum of the years I've lived in Canberra....about 7 years in all. As much as Canberra gets written off, I have always had a pretty good time there and I will miss all these friends a lot.

To begin with, we're hitting the road in mainly South East Asia for two months. So since that party we have been packing up our things and cleaning up the house we've lived in for the last 4 months. 4 months isn't too long to live in a house, and it's not long to forget the memories of cleaning the previous place, so it hasn't been that exciting.

Today I drove down to Bega to drop a bunch of things with my parents, then tomorrow I will take the bus back to the capital. I guess once we finish the cleaning, we will be ready to go, ready for a holiday.

So here's a brief outline of where we are headed for the next couple of months.

• Sydney
• Gold Coast
• Malaysia
• India- fly into Mumbai then head north by train and bus to Nepal
• Thailand- fly into Bangkok then head by train or bus to
• Cambodia and Vietnam

We have 2 months so of course we won't be able to see everything we want to, or to completely experience all the places, but it will be a good chance to see what we like, then we can visit those places in the future. Francisca has never been to Asia and I have only really spent a few days in a couple of places.

So I'm pretty excited to be hitting the road and will try and post here reasonably regularly to give some updates about what we get up to.