THE SOUTH EAST ASIA REPORT

Since we are now in India, it is hard to think back to a time when people were not trying to sell us something every two seconds. Oh, wait, that happened in SE Asia too. So, I am going to try to do a quick run down of our adventures for the first two weeks in January...

After a number of teary goodbyes we left New Zealand stuffed full of turkey and ready to begin our adventure. Singapore was a great warm-up - clean, organised and really, really expensive. Well, except for the bargain ten dollar watch we bought in Chinatown but that stopped working later the same day. This, however, has turned out not to be a problem. We no longer have jobs or a home or pressing engagements so time has become a rather fluid notion. The highlight of Singpore was definitely the zoo, where Connon spent a disproportionate amount of time with the snakes and Komodo dragons and I bonded with a friendly Lemur (photos to come!).

Moving on to Malaysia we spent New Year's Eve in Kuala Lumpur, having been shown around by Connon's work mate, Hok. Who knew New Year's Eve could be so fun completely sober!? The streets were packed and we had the good fortune to get sprayed with foam by strangers on more than one occasion, this seemed to be the rebellious NYE act in KL. Which I tend to think is much better than getting drunk and smooching/beating up strangers, the standard custom in the rest of the world.

We headed north on the train to Penang and colonial Georgetown which was a lovely little place where we ate more than our fair share of chicken satay and all the other yummy Malaysian food. I was thinking it was quite sad to leave the country after spending so little time there, but was even more sad upon finding out our train to Thailand had been cancelled. Thus ensued an exciting taxi/minibus/$10 by-the-hour-love motel adventure that eventually got us to Koh Pha-Ngan and our beautiful beach...

Let me tell you, there is nothing like psyching one's self up for a big backpacking trip and then 5 days later sitting around at a resort for a week. We did lots of snorkelling (50 m from a fishing boat - I briefly considered pulling a greenpeace move and tying myself, flippers and all to it, but then realised I might get shot). BUT then I got very sick, which unfortunately "forced" us to stick around for the Full Moon Party. Now THAT was fun. Again, I was sober, but while Connon enjoyed the buckets of red bull and vodka I got to see the evolution of a full moon party: 11-12pm: fire juggling and dancing to crappy trance music, 12-1am: happy drunkeness and friendly chatter, fire juggling turns into fire rope skipping usually with clothes catching on fire, 1-2am: dancing becomes icky, usually between dorky white men with no rhythm and thai girls, 2-3am: more dancing but with less coordination and careless lighting of fireworks into bystander's eyes, 3-4am: home time, passing several injured and bleeding partiers, half-passed out on the street. A pad thai to finish off the night and overall a very cool time!

Off we then went to Bangkok, surviving THE WORST boat ride EVER. There we did the usual temples and Khao San Road, blah, blah - all very lovely BUT the ultimate highlight (for me - maybe not for Connon) was joining in on a sunset aerobics session by the river. Now, I've been trying to think of good excuses - like maybe we had been eating too much pad thai, or maybe my limbs were too long to keep up - but this class KICKED OUR BUTTS. Our instructor (imagine a Thai Jane Fonda, complete with feathered hair and headband) was feisty! Barking out orders and puntuating each kick with a "Hiiiiyaaah!", it took us a while to realise we were way out of our element. On a positive note, we seemed to have entertained the local people watching and were (not for the last time) the subject of many a photo. When a full-on film crew wandered by, though, we decided to sit the rest out.

We spent the rest of our days in Bangkok visiting a floating market aka a floating tourist trap, a snake farm and show (SOO wouldn't be operational in NZ or Canada) and a "tiger temple" where tigers are kept in a sanctuary run by Buddhist monks. Okay, so this was probably more of a highlight than the aerobics session. We got to sit with the tigers and touch them. They were amazing, and made me even more interested in getting a dog. A very large orange one.

And then we had to mentally prepare ourselves for India. Though having now been here for a few days I don't think anything can prepare you for India. Stay tuned :)