Merry Christmas from the Thai Post

With the 4 month mark close approaching since we returned from our trip in Thailand, we were wondering if this parcel would ever arrive.

On leaving Bangkok, we still had almost a month of travels, and had accumulated quite a lot of things- presents, some rugs for our future home from Nepal, etc. With plans to continue our travels through the rest of Thailand and onto Cambodia and Vietnam, then back to Australia and over the Pacific to Chile, we thought it would be best to ship these things that we wouldn't need immediately.

I really had no idea how long it would take to ship things to Chile, or if there was even a direct route for the shipping at all, so I really didn't know how long it will take. The tracking at the Thai Post didn't offer much information, simply saying it had gone through customs, but that was in September. I don't think the tracking even said it made it on to the boat. Correos Chile told us that they couldn't do anything until it arrived in the country, so we had to simply wait.

In the end, the shipping was kind of unnecessary, I got sick in Koh Samui and went to hospital, and after that we cut our trip short. Francisca was also expecting to have to pay some kind of fees, or to get robbed, but the box arrived here last night, with nothing more to pay.

For me, I had offloaded two jumpers. It seemed a waste to carry around the things that I had barely used, and I knew we would be coming back to warmer weather in Australia. Of course it was freezing cold and raining when we arrived back in Australia...

Last night in town

Well it was only a bit more than a week ago that I wrote that we were halfway through our trip. Plans have changed slightly, and that's not the case any more. We will be boarding a Qantas flight tomorrow evening and the next morning, not only will we be back in Australia, it will be my birthday and another year will have ticked over. It will be my birthday and I will reach that definitive age, 27.

I have left here a sideshow of our time in Koh Samui. Mainly just some pictures of the beach, it was a perfect place for recovery, just lying down by the beach.

We went on a little tour on our last day in Koh Samui, I quite enjoyed it, even though some may say "it's a bit too touristy", we are on a holiday after all. We got to ride some elephants, just a short way along the river, and then feed them afterwards. We stopped by at a waterfall. There was the option to swim but the water didn't look all that appealing (especially compared with the beach).

The rest of the tour was advertised that we would see traditional thai house, Thai cooking class, monkey show etc. It didn't sound that exciting, but we drove over to the other side of the island, near where we came on with the ferry and pulled up to a place. We didn't actually go inside the house, but this was the traditional home, built on beams with wood, like the Queenslander style of home. It was just us and another couple from Melbourne on the tour, so it was a nice small size of group.

They showed us how to make curry, than demonstrated a monkey getting coconuts from a tree. This monkey, Michael was only a baby, so was pretty disobedient/cute. The guy giving us the demonstration was telling us about the monkey keeper- "he treats him just like a son, so there you have, two monkeys...."

We then got a demonstration of the best way to open the coconut and then to make coconut milk. Although it's probably a lot easier to just buy it in a can if you want to make an actual meal. After this it was home time, I thought it was a good amount of time, about 3 hours. A bit longer and the attention span of people starts to drift a bit too much.

No more than shadows, to be forgotten

Well in some good news, I think I'm feeling a lot more like myself. My general days I like to be active, so in between a sprained ankle and hospital inducing abdominal pain, I haven't been able to be to active.

A little way off the beach where we are staying is a buoy with a red flag on it. At a guess I would say it's about 120-200m away. It's not a big swim but the whole time we've stayed it's proved too far away for me.

This morning once I got out of bed, that took some time to do, but I decided, right I'm going for a swim. I didn't actually have the plan to head out to the flag, but once I was a little way into the water, I decided, it's our last day in town, I should conquer this challenge. So I was glad to get out there. The good news is I am not feeling too much pain, the sun is up as well, so I have resumed my position overlooking the beach.

Today is our last full day in Koh Samui, so we are going to spend the afternoon doing an elephant trek. I guess a lot of these things I consider generally as too touristy, but the fact is, we are a long way from home. We are tourists. We're staying in a "resort" after all...

Here is a picture Francisca took yesterday. You can see the beach (Lamai) through my sunglasses.

This is a picture of me in the hospital. It sure was a big room. Getting some travel insurance sure proved to be a good investment. I'm not sure if we will be able to get any money back for buying our new flights, but maybe we can get something back for not being able to take the remaining flights in the trip.

We will be heading home and actually in just 4 days we will fly into Sydney. That's not very long at all. So I guess we have 5 weeks now in Australia before we move on to Chile. Our time will be split somehow between Bega/Canberra/Sydney, I honestly have no plans, we'll just see how it all pans out, hopefully I'm feeling good.

High tide or no tide

So here we are, back in front of the beach. We had some light rain and it looks like it may rain again.

So in saying that, I am out of the hospital. We have come back to Samui Beach Resort, where they have treated us very nicely. An upgraded room as a matter of fact. What did I have to say about that?

Hey, it's not as close to the beach!

I was just kidding, as I have heard so many similar reactions in the past few years. Good to be out of the hospital though, lying around for a couple of days is not really my scene I've got to say. We watched a whole lot of movies, none of them very good. However, one standout from that was Toy Story 3.

I have been paying a bit of attention to the World Athletics Championships which are happening in South Korea at the moment. One of my old pals from doing tours at the AIS, Jared Tallent came away with bronze in the 50km walk. Nathan Deakes held the lead at the 30km mark but from what I read, he had to pull out with an injury. Too bad, buddy. Sounded like he was making his big comeback, but it wasn't to be.

So now the rain is back, the tide is up on the beach, we are sitting with the pals we met on the first night and staring into the sea. We have booked here for three more nights, then we'll see what happens from here.

It rains

So you know, they did say it was the monsoon season after all. After a day of doing not a whole lot, a short walk on the beach being the most strenuous activity, the skies have opened up and the rain is coming down.

I'm taking a rest outside on the balcony outside our room and seeing how the temperature drops and if the precipitation sticks around. This morning I didn't wake up in too good a condition, once again my health, which is normally pretty good has dropped down again. I woke up with a mean fever, a tummy ache and a headache and my back was hurting too. I think it may be a concoction of the wide range of medicines I have to take each day to get my ankle better, plus a few too many Changs at the beach bar with our new found friends. So I'm going to lay of the booze for tonight, hopefully I will improve. I don't know if I would say I am back to full health, but I sure know that staying out of this rain storm will keep me in better order than splashing around in the rain.

Francisca is out walking around in the rain, hopefully she has found some shelter, don't want to be two sick characters lounging around. Although, it's not the worst place to be recuperating (see: Khangsar Guest House, Nepal).

Koh Samui

Today, after quite a long trip down from Bangkok, we arrived in Koh Samui. I only got a couple of pictures on my phone a while after the sun had gone down (above x 2). I guess this island has a reputation as a pretty touristy place, but where we're staying, of course it is a tourist area, it's other western people, but it's not too crowded where we are staying at all. We are staying at the Southern end of Lamai beach. This isn't the main tourist hub, but you know, it's probably 50 metres from our room to the beach, and that's quite alright by me.

If the weather stays good tomorrow, I can strongly see us staying on another couple of nights. What an intriguing experience the old night bus was. Some things you read (eg Lonely Planet) are very much against taking these buses and suggest going to the government run buses, however I read they were more expensive and less comfortable.

The main thing for me was that they offered a hostel pickup. Of course I was surprised (though I should not have been) when a tuk tuk came to take us to the next stop. I had originally guessed that some kind of van would get us and take us to the bus station. Even though I went against the advice of the Lonely Planet, which TBQH hasn't provided a whole lot of helpful advice for us in the first place, I though that old mate in the hostel was too nice to sell us a dud deal. He seemed to want the best for everybody, and I didn't think he would be associated with any kind of scams and rackets, but I wasn't so sure once the tuk tuk dropped us just around the corner from Kao Sahn Road.

So we stayed there for a while and we didn't really know what was happening. I started talking to a couple of other people standing around, but they had this "too good for you" attitude so that conversation didn't get too far. After some time, it was quite a long time, maybe 45 minutes we were herded along to somewhere a little way up the road. A new bloke came and got all the receipts back off everyone. Of course every receipt would get a return visit with payment of their commission. We were waiting in this holding area for some more time, I got talking to a couple of blokes who lived in England. Most of the people we met in the course of the trip were English come to think of it.

Anyhow, one of these first guys was heading down to NZ for the World Cup (Rugby) after his travels in Thailand. I got talking to him about Union even though I don't really know very much, but I steered the conversation into the Manly/Melbourne fighting match, what a classic that was.

Another classic in their encounters was that 40-0 Grand Final scoreline. The Raiders won the under 20s that day, what promise that showed.....most of that side are in the firsts lineup now and have brought them precariously close to the wooden spoon. Results from tonight mean they will narrowly avoid that unwanted piece of kitchenware no matter what. That has nothing to do with our trip though, back on with the show.

We're talking to the blokes and a guy tells us the bus will be hear in five more minutes. Sure. Sure enough, five more minutes we're crossing over the road to get to the bus. One of these Rugby blokes had gone to the toilet so he had to make a mad dash to even get on the bus. On the bus we saw a couple of movies. First up was The Lincoln Lawyer which was ok, particularly for a movie shown on the bus, but then the next one Stuck, this was up there with the absolute worst movies I have ever seen. Even the fact that the main girl (Mena Savari??) bopped some other girl, who was at the time naked, with a frying pan, could not save this movie. I am currently looking on IMDB for a verdict of just how bad this movie is according to others, but the bus seemed to give it an all round score of about 1/10.

After the movies it seemed it was time for lights out. We weren't too tired yet and we had a game of chess on the mini chess set I have been carrying around, which hadn't been brought out yet. We had played some of the other games inside, particularly snakes and ladders, but no chess. Anyhow, it seemed we were the only people with our above light on, but all of a sudden all the lights came on, it was time to stop.

As per any long distance bus trip, we stopped in some crappy little down, it was no difference to stopping at the service station outside of Holbrook or outside of Bowen on the Greyhound in Australia. I hadn't eaten any dinner so I gladly gobbled down some veg noodles, mainly as something to go with my concoction of medicines. I think there are still quite a few days to go until the 10 days of taking all these medicines concludes, but I'll say now that the old overnight bus wasn't the best for the ankle. All seems ok now, but not just my ankle,but my right leg was quite swollen from the ride last night.

Anyhow, we got some eats, then game back to our match of chess when suddenly it was lights out. Just like in the movies in jail, the time comes for lights out, but no warning. I guess that meant time for sleep. I really barely slept at all. Some posts ago I talked about some albums of the past, and instead of sleeping I was thinking of an album to represent each year. Seeing as some of these were a long time ago, I'm not sure if the years are accurate, but I had something for each year...

1994- Midnight Oil- Blue Sky Mining

1995- Oasis- What's The Story Morning Glory

1996- Silverchair- Freak Show

1997- The Living End- The Living End

1998- Frenzal Rhomb- Meet The Family (including Mongrel live album)

1999- Slipknot- Slipknot

2000- 28 Days- Upstyle Down

2001- Superheist- The Prize Recruit

2002- Soilwork- Natural Born Chaos

2003- The Butterfly Effect- Begins Here

2004- Machine Head- Through The Ashes of Empires

2005- Parkway Drive- Killing With A Smile

2006- 4 Dead- Blood and Piss

2007- Daysend- The Warning

2008- Samsara- The Emptiness

2009- A Secret Death- A Secret Death

2010- Break Even- The Bright Side

2011- Miles Away- Endless Roads

That was the list that I came up with of the top of my head, or something along those lines. Funnily enough it's the more recent years where I'm listening to albums a year or two out of date. Of course anybody could do this exercise one day and then come up with a completely different answer a few days later, and maybe I will experiment with that in some days.

Maybe after I'm done resting at the beach.....

So back on the bus, we're sleeping. Well I barely slept at all, but we have to be trying to sleep because you can't even turn on your light. I listened to some music for a while, and I was kind of hoping to drop off doing that, but no such luck. In the whole journey I don't think I would have slept much more than an hour.

I must have got to sleep in the morning because suddenly there was a commotion, it seemed it was time to get off the bus and change to our transfer to the ferry. Of course that was not just waiting where we arrived, we had to wait some more time for that, then sit on the bus to the ferry.

Even though it's just 10pm, I'm feeling pretty tired. I may continue this one tomorrow. We met some really nice people here at the place we're staying, can fill more about that tomorrow. I think the first thing to do tomorrow will be to walk the length of the beach which is just a stone throw away. Of course I would love to do a run, but that's not really on the cards.

Woahhhh, we're halfway there

As much as I sung the praises of the SiamSato last night (Well not really, but I think I said it was drinkable), with more than half the bottle still inside, I had to declare the contest over.

Today, I think, marks the halfway point in our trip. Tomorrow evening we will make our way down the coast to Ko Samui, and spend some time relaxing on a few different islands. It is the rainy season, so it may not be quite as relaxing as one would hope, but still, I can't walk too much, so best to sit around at the beach.

This little boot I have got. The Golden Boot, I like to call it, is really helping reduce the swelling and keep compression on the ankle. I definitely overdid the walking too soon (particularly our trip to the Word Peace Stupa in Pokhara), but I must say it was feeling good beforehand.

It is quite unbelievable the amount of medicines that the doctor prescribed to me. In total there are 5 as a matter of fact. There are 2 for reducing pain and swelling, one extra pain killer, one muscle relaxant and apparently one of this painkillers can upset your tummy, so there's one for fixing that back up.

So as it is the halfway point of the trip, here is a bullet point list of what we have been up to.

• Quit our jobs and moved out of our house in Canberra
• Stopped in Sydney and visited a couple of relatives and then flew to Gold Coast
• Stayed overnight and flew to Malaysia
• Went to KL, Melaka and Singapore then back up to KL
• Flew to Mumbai
• Stayed a couple of days in Mumbai and then flew to Delhi
• From Delhi we went to Rajasthan, stopping in Jaipur and Udaipur
• Took an overnight train to Agra, stopping for a few pictures of the Taj Mahal
• Went back to Delhi for one more night.
• Left town on the Indian Independence Day for Nepal
• Sprained my ankle in Kathmandu on day one
• Did some sightseeing and met some friends, but mainly stuck around in a crappy hostel
• Went to Pokhara, which was a super nice place. Saw the Himalayas from the plane on the way there.
• Stopped one night back in Kathmandu then took the flight to Bangkok
• Now we have stayed two nights in a lovely guesthouse, with a very friendly owner (Kao Sahn Baan Thai)
• Today we move next door as they have no rooms
• The first day we head north to Ayuttayah Province and saw some sights
• Yesterday we met up with Jonathan, had some beers and some good food
• Let's see what today brings. I'm quite happy for it to be a whole lot of not much, it's a nice place to sit here.

SiamSato

So I left my dear wife under the pretty vague instructions "just get us a beer will ya luv". She came back with a brown bottle, looked like a success. Siam Sato it is called, and after my first swill I thought, this sure isn't beer.

It tasted a bit like cider. After a quick trawl on Google I found this thread "SiamSato, what the hell is this?" http://teakdoor.com/thailands-wine-cellar/2817-siamsato-what-is-this-stuff.html

It seems it's some kind of rice wine.

We met with Jonathan today. I first met him in the hostel in Canberra about 2 years ago, I was just about to leave for my first overseas journey and since then we have always talked about how great it would be to be travelling, compared our different plans and ideas on the travel game.

It is quite amazing how in the end, we just left on our journeys a couple of days apart. I visited the hospital today, the seemed to do a good job and the doctor gave me a lot of different medicines to take. He said not to walk too much, but we did go for a short walk, where we may have seen the Queen (? not too sure about that), but we were stopped from crossing the bridge while a convoy of cars went by).

We are not too sure of where to go next. Unfortunately this current hostel was fully booked for tomorrow. We haven't really finished with Bangkok (too be honest we've barely started), so we booked another night next door. We did this in Jaipur and the second place was totally substandard compared to the first place, but hopefully they will be just as good as each other.

Here's another thread on SiamSato, this time from the Lonely Planet Thorntree forum. http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=1724931

You know I have drunk many boxes of fruity lexia in the past so this is just another crappy drink. It's not really good, but not as bad as some describe. I'm not so sure it would keep the tuk tuk's going.

Speaking of these scammers, Jonathan has a good attitude towards them, he makes it all part of the game. They say, oh hello where are you going to? "Phuket, take me to Phuket, how much?" or other things that would take something like a week in one of these suspiciously put together contraptions. Keeping it fun is a good way to keep up the positive attitude as fighting with touts and other dodgy characters can really bring you down.

Compared to India, Thailand doesn't have the same volume of this annoyances, actually Thailand is pretty easy going, especially in the traffic department. It is good to see people driving on the side of the road they are meant to be on, and not going full speed down the wrong side at an oncoming bus.

As much as I have said that this SiamSato is ok, it's taken me a good long time to get even down to the first label. Probably wouldn't trade on this one again...

Thailand zine scene search

While sitting here getting some rest for my ankle, I started making some enquiries into the zine world of Thailand. I have only just started looking, but I came across a very interesting write up of a Terror show in Bangkok.

By the looks of it, Jagged Visions is a punk/hardcore zine from the Netherlands, and the main guy has a brother living in Bangkok. But anyway, some interesting points in there about the scene. I found a link to another website about Thai hardcore, but it hadn't been updated in a few months. The last link was to Relentless, from Sydney playing. They're not very good though.

I looked on Last FM and there is a death metal festival on in about a week from now. I don't think I could really handle from midday to midnight of death/black metal, it doesn't sound that much up my alley and I'd say we would be out of town.

I came across a couple of other travel zines about Thailand. I have the idea to do up a zine about our trip, but let's see. Anyhow, I will search for more on Thailand as the day goes on. Looks like Jonathan has arrived in town, possibly a couple of days ago. He wrote me a comment on facebook at 5am saying he had met some characters and gone out partying, good times. So maybe we will see him later in the afternoon...

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"

On to the next one

So we are entering the next stage of our trip. We arrived late last night in Bangkok and we are staying in the very pleasant Kkaosan Baan Thai, which is a Guesthouse which is set up as a normal Thai house.

We had another ankle injury last night, as our friend Viv suggested, maybe taking the "his and hers thing a little to far"....

We are meeting in a while with Sun, a friend of Francisca that she met in her studies at ANU. In a couple of days we are likely to come across with Jonathan again, he has been doing some Muy Thai training down near Phuket somewhere.

We took the flight with Air India yesterday. The Indian airlines generally get a pretty bad wrap, but both flights we had no troubles, got a good meal, got a couple of beers. I hadn't even downed my first Tiger and the lady puts down another one on my tray table...Got talking to the guy sitting next to me, he was a hugely bearded bloke (puts me to shame by a long way...). He was from the USA but earnt a crust by going around the world, buying some jewellery in places like Nepal, Thailand etc, then selling it in the USA. Seemed a nice bloke. Also watched a movie that I was paying vague attention too that had an incredibly stupid plot. I might try and find some more information about it later on.

I have found a link to a review of the movie, which I have linked above. The movie was called Lafangey Parindey. It's not very positive, but it's pretty accurate....

So today Sun is going to show us around the place, tomorrow we can probably show ourselves around a bit. We have 3 days booked here and then not really any plan on where to go. I think the coastline is calling. There's not too much plan from here, we just have a flight from Hanoi in just over a month, so we can do whatever we want really.