Hi again!

Once back on the mainland we had to decide where to go next. We had been considering Vietnam but the visa was quite expensive and the bus to Bangkok was just as cheap as the bus to Hoh chi minh city. At the last minute we decided to go to Bangkok, because both trips were about 12 hours and I hadn't been to the north of Thailand yet. What we thought was going to be a casual 12 hour bus trip was actually 16-18 hours when we bought the ticket. Too late to change our mind we went anyway. What we didn't realise was that this 18 hours didn't include three hours at the border stop. Then somehow three more hours seemed to be added to the trip. I don't know how or where. In total the whole trip took more than 24 hours on four different busses. Exhausted we tried to catch up on sleep in Bangkok, which for the first time I realised was an amazingly developed city. I've always arrived here straight from Australia or New Zealand and have only ever been able to see the differences between a first world and developing. Now comparing the differences between Cambodia and Thailand I see it completely differently. Phnom Pehn has only a few high rises, the Skyline of Bangkok extends so far it's incredible! My favourite place to see this is at the top of the Banyan Tree Hotel at the Moon Bar where you have an amazing view from an open air Bar/Restarant at 61 stories high. While we were in Bangkok we also managed to reach the weekend market, which has a great selection of cheap clothes, street food and animals. If that's what you want. I would love to come here every year and buy everything for my house and ship it home! The ultimate shopping trip! Mum, you'd love it!

Chiang Mai

After Bangkok we took a bus to Chiang Mai. This was a much cooler temperature, being further north and amongst lots of hills. Chiang mai has some beautiful bhuddist temples and SO many tourist attractions. We visited a tiger sanctuary, had photos with full grown tigers ( supposedly they're not drugged, just well fed and sleepy), held snakes, watched men kissing snakes then even holding them in their mouth, went white water rafting, bamboo rafting, rode on an elephant and hiked to waterfalls. While I liked Chiang Mai, I definitely felt like we were just visiting a lot of tourist attractions rather than really seeing Thailand. Unfortunately ( or fortunately depending on what perspective you take) so much of Thailand is supported by tourism so it's hard to imagine what it would be like here before the masses of tourists started arriving. While at times it's regrettable, you can see the Thai people have so much more money than ever before and the people in Cambodia, it seems that tourism is possibly at saturation point now, prices are rising though and I imagine that will lead to less backpacking tourists who only spend $30 per day and more who spend over $100 per day. Whatever tourism brings, it doesn't change the food of Thailand, which is worth coming just to experience. The thai people seem to have been able master the ability to combine chilli, lemongrass, lime and coconut to perfection and Massaman and Green Curries are also amongst my favourite. It's so nice to be able to travel and just eat whenever you feel like it. Food is so cheap you never have to cook for yourself or go hungry to try to make sure you stick to budget. Travelling in South East Asian countries is so fun because you can do things you can't afford at home or even in European countries. You get a bit spoilt too, when it only costs $1 to get a kilo of washing done I'm probably going to forget how to look after myself once this trip is over. The most difficult thing I have to do these days is pack up my backpack and carry it for a few hours.

Pai

A few hours from Chiang Mai is Pai, a cute little town right underneath some hills. Pai ends up being everyone's favourite once they've found it. Both cheap and easy, there is hardly any traffic to worry about, Bangkok and Chiang Mai can be so hectic and the traffic kind of gets to you after a while. This is the most peaceful place I've been to in a while and you can rent bikes for less than $2 a day, finally we get some exercise riding around the hills. There is so much to see here and I actually don't think we saw all of it. Everytime I meet someone else who has been to Pai they ask me if I saw some other thing we didn't even think of. That said I would love to go back to Pai. There are people staying here who seem to have been here for weeks and one guy I met said it was the fifth time he had been here. We went for a bike ride one days and passed four elephant houses and while I was having coffee in a tree house a couple riding an elephant passed underneath me unexpectedly. Kat left to fly home from Chiang Mai and so I was on my own for the first time. It was sad saying good bye but I'm pretty sure she'll miss me and meet me somewhere else soon!

I wasn't sure what to do next, my friend from Brisbane was in the South of Thailand and my visa was about to expire. If you fly into Thailand you can stay for 30 days but if you cross the border over land you can only stay for 14 days. I wasn't too fussed on going where she was staying but wanted to see her and worked out a way to make a border run on the way so I could stay another 14 days.

This was a long trip all the way down to Patong beach Phuket. It crazy how comfortable I find bus travel now, two overnight buses and a boat trip to Burma later I arrived in my least favourite place in Thailand. Patong beach is as developed as I think is possible. There isn't a spare inch of sand for the whole beach which I think is roughly a kilometre. It's covered with chairs, umbrellas and people selling things. The beach is actually quite beautiful but you don't really notice because there are just so many people around you. Patong is a place where you can really buy or see anything you want. There are iguana's, gibbons and lady boys (thai drag queens but much better looking, actually its kind of difficult to tell if they're male or female) all along the main street and the night life here goes all night. I have been here before and it was so interesting to see how different it is in only two years. There are nice cars everywhere now. Previously there were Tuk Tuks ( Scooters with seats attached) everywhere and these were the cheapest way to travel. Now the "Tuk Tuk's " are actually real cars with open seats at the back. In Bangkok city, Tuk Tuks are now only a tourist attraction and actually cost much more than taking a real taxi. Most Thai people have smart phones and bartering is largely a thing of the past. Things are becoming much more fixed in price it seems like there have been a lot more tourists with a lot more money who are willing to pay first asking price so it is better for the shopkeepers to hang on to merchandise and wait for a better price than to sell as much as possible for any price. While you can still barter in some shops, there is not such a friendly undertone to the exchange as in Cambodia. The thai people here are really sick of tourists and you can understand why!

I spent a few days here hanging out with Eliza, it was really nice to catch up and I met a few nice people at the hostel I was staying at. It's not too far from Phuket to Koh Phi Phi island, which is the island where the movie the Beach was filmed. So after Eliza left I took a boat to the island to spend a few days.

Koh Phi Phi:

After being is such a crazy, busy tourist region Koh Phi Phi felt a little better.. but not much. This island has a small strip of land between limestone cliffs and I think every possible inch of land has been developed. They water is also kind of dirty because of all the boats in the bay and no real sewerage system on the island. That said, this island cannot hide its beauty. The cliffs are really stunning and after a short hike up one hill you can see just how pretty the island is. This particular island was actually hit really badly by the boxing day tsunami and looking at the landscape you can see how bad it would have been.

The hostel I stayed in here was quite incredible. Set up a hill with what felt like a million steps. There was a restaurant in a pirate ship halfway up and then the rooms themselves were SO dirty and the walls were covered in graffiti. The views were actually beautiful though and there so many friendly travellers staying here that it was a lot of fun. There were even a few people here who I had met in Patong beach as well. I spent most of the time here walking around, shopping, eating or swimming. I took a tour with some of the kids from the hostel that took us to the neighbouring island "koh phi phi don" which is actually where they filmed the beach scenes and did some snorkelling in amazingly clear water with hundreds of beautiful fish.

One of the girls staying at the hostel, Kelly, also had to leave Thailand on the same days as me and we decided to leave for Koh Lanta island and head south to cross the border into Malaysia. We spent a few days at Koh lanta then took a ferry and bus to the Island of Langkawi in Malaysia.