Blog #2: The Difficult Second Album

After a month on the sidelines, the blog stoppped imitating Ollie Cussen and has made it's long awaited return from injury.

After mounting pressure from our doting public, we have become aware of our lack of committment to this blog, on behalf of both of us, I am truly sorry.

Since entry number one we have done a lot of activities and therefore will have to neglect a few details.

From Bangkok we flew to Cambodia, spent two nights in the capital Phnom Penh. The highlights were the genocide museum, seeing a man with a face that was a cross between Harvey 2 face Dent from Batman and Lord Voldemort and seeing an elephant walking down the street.

From Phnom Penh, we travelled by boat to Siem Reap. We sat on the roof of the boat, which gave Alun his first opportunity to pit himself against his perennial nemesis: The Sun. Alun emerged victorious (1-0), Andy suffered a couple of minor flesh wounds to the ankle.

Siem Reap was amazing, we found a street where drinks were 33p. We spent 2 days at the temples which were very impressive. On the sceond of these days we got up at 5 to watch the sun rise at Angkor Wat. After Alun's comprehensive victory in round 1, the Sun refused to turn up to round 2, letting us down by not shining the bright rays we were expecting from the sunrise. Instead it just got light.

From Siem Reap we flew to Koh Samui, and "pulled a Rooney" by scoring dates with two pensioners by carrying their bags on the plane. Unlike our national hero however we politely declined.

In Samui we stayed equidistant from the two main towns, Chaweng and Lamai, in bungalows right on a rocky beach with nice views. In our hotel we met 2 English guys who became a permanent fixture in our trip for the remainder of Thailand.

In Samui we rented scooters with varying degrees of success, after a couple of of near misses, led us to the conclusion, "4 wheels good 2 wheels bad". The beaches were nice, the nightlife impressive but "no we don't want a tuk tuk, suit, a 'massage' or to go into your friend's shop, thanks."

Phanghan beckoned: Upon arrival in Phanghan, we found our bungalow on a private beach, 5 minute taxi ride from the party area. The only evidence of civilization being our huts and the bar area. We were greeted by the owner of the hotel, a very intruiging character; the 25 yr old Geordie with a penchant for smoking weed with his guests, and getting his girlfriend to do everything else his job required of him. Some of our highlights of this complex character included:

1. A & A: Can I have two beers please?
G: Can you wait until I've finsihed my baguette?

2. A & A: Do you have a safe?
G: I've got a cupboard in my room, that's pretty safe.

3. A & A: Where's good for a night out?
G: I dunno man, MAYBE Haad Rin...but it kicks off here sometimes. It gets pretty wild.
Context: Haad Rin is the main party area where the full moon party happens, his bar is tiny and secluded.

Koh Phangan is basically just a party island where everyone parties on the beaches, drinking buckets, skipping over fire and general hedonistic activities. We timed our trip for the biggest of these, the full moon party. Just like a Chelsea player's attitude to relationships, Haad Rin displays a complete lack of laws, ethics, morals and rules. However it does provide a few stories...

Next destination Koh Tao. We took the boat between the islands, upon arrival we found ourselves at a dive school called Crystal, which provided us with 4 nights free accommodation with a 4 day open water dive course. We spent our days learning to dive and our nights drinking with our dive group and instructors. Diving itself was amazing, with great visibility, we were apparently very lucky in that we got to see a giant turtle, huge stingray and many other weird and wonderful creatures. As expected we excelled at the course and got taken out as a two by our instructor the day after the course ended to do our deep sea qualification. We went down to 30 metres and went through a swim through (tunnel) before having to flee from an aggressive fish called a trigger, which was keen to protect it's territory even against the intimidating tag team of Alun and Andy. We stayed in Koh Tao for a week in total, as the diving and social life was amazing.

In order to assist Alun with his form of sleeping on any mode of transport regardless of comfort or time of day our transport to Krabi was an overnight sleeper boat, filled with beds on the floor. Upon arrvial on the mainland, our bus driver took us on a few detours to his firend's cafes before taking us to Krabi. Like it's STD namesake Krabi is not to be recommended! Although it did provide us with ocassional scenery reminiscent of the floating mountains of Avatar and Alun the chance to shoot his 9mm. At this point our two had become 3 as we had picked up our friend Luke who we had picked up in Samui.

After Krabi came our favourite place yet, Koh Phi Phi. We took a boat early one morning, found ourselves a hostel then immediately booked a day trip on a long tail boat around the smaller island of Phi Phi - Phi Phi Leh. This is a nature reserve and it was beautiful. The island was sheer cliff faces, with turquoise sea, white sand and secluded cove beaches. The trip had many stops for snorkelling, sight seeing (like the Beach from the Leo Di Caprio film of the same name), playing with monkeys and we even persuaded our driver to take us cliff jumping. The night life was a smaller Phangan with beach fire games and countless bars. We took a leaf out of the Robbie Winfield Lonely Planet and made some alternative friends.

The next day was beach based, with the night consisting of choosing a tattoo for our friend Luke, which he had done that night, whilst we went and got our feet cleaned by fish in a "fish spa". After all this excitement we went to a bar with a boxing ring in the middle. Friends form the audience were getting in to the ring and fighting, however we decided that Phi Phi wasn't ready for Clash of the Titans 2, so remained as spectators.

Went to Phuket...Phuket's rubbish... Got the plane to Kuala Lumpur.

Despite Malaysia having some of South East Asia's most beautiful scenery and wide ranging activities we decided our time would be much more valuably spent at the world's largest shopping mall: 16 floors of shops, cinemas, bowling alleys, museums, theme park, a university, and an international squash tournament.

With Kl's shopping centre's well and truly investigated it was off to Singapore.

Due to a scheduling error we only had one night in Singapore, so we crashed at Alun's parents' friend's flat in the centre, his wife washed our clothes and fed us making it our favourite place yet!

With SE Asia finished, Australia loomed. After a long trip we landed in Carins. We were staying in a hostel which housed 700 backpackers and had it's own club. This combined with 5 days of rain and meeting a large group of like minded English lads led to freshers week number 5. All the main attractions were cancelled due to the weather so day time activites were limited. We did find time however to hang out with an Aboriginal tribe, throw spears and learn the digeridoo. As expected, after excelling in all areas, we were asked to join the Tjapukai. As we explained to them however, unless they incorporate Pro Evolution Soccer and Gillette Soccer Saturday into their way of life we would have to politely decline.

After 5 days in Cairns, we rented a campervan and drove south. The major stopping point was Fraser ISland (the largest sand island in the world). We did a two day tour here then drove south to Brisbane, after stopping at Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo on Andy's birthday.

That's all from us, you stay classy Reading.