Hi everyone!
Well....i think we deserve a round of applause for catching up with the blog completely yeyy! We haven't got all of the photos for Thailand as we sent most of them home but i will add them when we get back. We were in Thailand for five weeks so i'll recap on what we got up to whilst we were there.
We flew in from Luang Prabang to Chiang Mai in north Thailand. We decided to fly for the first time overland, because it was either an hour on the plane, or three days on a slow boat! The flight was obviously more expensive but we think we made the right choice!
We got to Chiang Mai and stayed in a really good guest house which was really cheap and clean and had it's own tour packages rather than being an agent for them. This meant we got cheap tours and they were also tailor made to what you wanted to do, so we booked one and set off the next day. We got stuck on this two day trek with these two girls from Essex who had the most annoying whiney voices and just complained constantly throughout the whole day. They had never set foot in the countryside before and were crying about how hard it was. It was literally a mapped out walk through a national park, nothing like what we did in Cambodia, and they kept falling over in the mud and crying. We got to the village when it was dark and so we couldn't go swimming like we had planned, so instead we had tea and went straight to bed. Both of us woke up in the middle of the night and felt a bit ill. Five minutes later we were taking it in turns to go to the toilet and it ended up that we both had food poisoning, which is awful anyway, but especially when you are stuck in a bamboo hut!
The next day we still weren't better and this was the day of our elephant ride through the jungle. Having food poisoning and riding an elephant is not a good combination, especially when two Essex girls keep turning around and going "eeeewwww" when i'm being sick over the side and clinging for dear life!! How about, "don't look then!!"
After that we went on a bamboo raft and i was just floating in the river most of the way down keeping cool which helped and we both managed to eat some lunch later which made us feel better for the drive back.
The day after was my birthday and we went to a tiger sanctuary where you could have your pictures took with different tigers including baby ones! We were a bit concerned that they had been drugged to keep them docile but they said that they are well fed and trained and are also sleepy in the heat of the day. We still weren't sure but when i went in with the tiger cubs, they definitely weren't drugged and kept biting me and pulling my clothes. They were really cute but it felt a bit wrong when they were being pulled into position for photographs.
We then went to a shopping mall to go to the cinema where i checked my emails and realised that it wasn't actually my birthday at all and i'd missed it (thanks Sarah!). It was actually the day before when i was being sick over the side of an elephant! Nice! The owner of the hostel made me feel better though because she had bought me a scarf as a birthday present which was really nice of her.
The next day i went on a batik course. It was actually in a lady's house and i was the only person there, doing batik listening to the panpipe version of Candle in the Wind! It felt a bit weird because i was the only person there in a strange woman's house and when we had lunch, we were sat in silence eating off her best china! Bit strange!
We left Chiang Mai and headed down towards Bangkok but we didn't stay there as we had a week before Alistair's family came out so we decided to spend a bit of time on the beach resort of Pattaya. It ended up being the biggest mistake because the place is one of the worst places we have ever been to. It's basically a hub of sex tourism and its full of go go bars and prostitutes. It makes it worse because the men are mainly retired age, some even look around 80! and the girls are really young.
Its really open and they are bargaining the price in the street infront of everyone, it was an awful place.
We left there pretty sharpish and went to Bangkok instead which was a pleasant change. We still had a few days to wait until everyone came out so we just saved some money by eating crisp sandwiches in the room and watching films! When Alistair's family arrived we were really excited and checked in to the hotel early and waited for them. There was his dad Chris and his wife Alison and his sister Laura and her husband Dean. We had three days in Bangkok where we took a boat ride along the river and saw the Grand Palace. It was really good but the weaher was so hot, it made sight seeing a bit difficult. At nights we went to a restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms which supports HIV and AIDS. The food was great and you even got condoms instead of mints at the end!
We then set of to Koh Samui for 10 nights in a gorgeous 5 star resort. It was like heaven after all the horrible backpacker places we had been to. The breakfasts at the resort were fantastic and we knew we would miss that straight away. Someone even came in to turn your bed down in the evening and get your slippers ready! It was so nice all being together and we spent time exploring the island, feeding elephants and taking the mick out of aussies...."creeeam and braaaawn, are you serious??" ha ha!
In the room you had a itinerary of what activities were taking place everyday and one of them that sound interesting was plaster painting. I was imagining using plaster on a canvas, in an authentic Thai way. In no way did the activity mention whether it was for children or adults......so i turned up bright and early to be told to choose a little plaster model to paint. I was so embarrassed i just did what she said instead of walking away! Then to make matters worse, a 3 and a 5 year old came in to join in the fun!! After i had finished painting.....(yes i sat there for an hour!) the woman told me to come back after it had dried. I ignored her and it turned up in my room later! I don't think Alistair will let me live that down!
We thought one of the highlights was on the last night we had a really nice dinner in a gorgeous restaurant which was on top of a cliff. We had a really nice evening and it was really hard for us when they left. We spent the next day teary eyed and were really sad for about a week and really wanted to come home.
From Koh Samui we travelled to Krabi on the other side of Thailand. For some reason it managed to take 15 hours to get from one side of Thailand to our hotel at night. It was a nightmare and in the morning when we went exploring, it was nothing like we expected. We were expecting the white beaches and turquoise seas, but it was a big disappointment. We were told it was the start of rainy season, which we knew anyway, but still thought it would be really beautiful. We took a boat to what was supposed to be the best beach in Thailand but that was the same as everywhere else. I'm sure if we had come in peak time it would have been different, but there wasn't really much to do there apart from the beach stuff.
Our hotel had free transport into town as it was too far to walk so when we booked it, it was a motorbike with a cage on the side. Alistair, for some reason thought it would be a good idea to shuffle back whilst we were moving and it put the bike completely off balance! The guy panicked and couldn't control it and we skidded on the wet road and went onto the other side of the road and up the grass verge. The bike and cage fell backwards and we were left upside down on the side of the road! Two guys came over to help us but everyone was ok thankfully. It's just lucky nothing was coming the oher way!
We didn't venture to any other islands because of the weather and to say it wasn't peak season it was really expensive. It was £22 each for a trip to Phi Phi and it was apparently the same price when it is really nice weather too.
We left Krabi and went straight to Malaysia from there. Thailand was ok, but it seemed really overpriced and not as much to see and do as the other countries we had been. Everything there was catered towards tourists, which we thought would be great if you were on a two week holiday, but it didn't really fit into our backpacker budget!
It was so nice seeing Alistair's family though, we miss you!!! xxxxx