BootsnAll Travel Network



RTW October/08 to October/09

My boyfriend and I are backpacking through Australia, Thailand, Egypt and Europe starting at the end of October/08.

Muay Thai Fights in Bangkok

February 16th, 2009

Saturday night we decided to go to a Muay Thai fight at Lumphinee Stadium.  We thought it was supposed to be cheaper but it turned out to be 3400 baht, which equals $121!  Ryan really wanted to see the fights.  Ryan was excited to see an authentic thai fight.  The stadium was crazy with caged off seating for third class where the betting goes on.  The Thai really get into it, yelling and screaming their bets.  Its is so loud in there when the fights get really good.  We got ringside seats, 3 rows back.  There was about 10 fights and it went fro 8:30pm to midnight!  A little too long for me but it was still fun.  There were three knockouts and they were taken off on stretchers! Blood everywhere.  We even got one of the knockouts on video. 

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We are definitely not in Canada anymore!!

February 13th, 2009

We arrived in Bangkok late last night around 10:30pm but it really felt like 2:30am to us because of Melbourne time.  It was a good flight though. Went by really fast actually. We flew with Thai Airways.

When we arrived in Bangkok we had to find a taxi that would take us to our hotel.  No one speaks english, and everyone wants to take your money!  We were so confused. We finally got a taxi for 400 baht, this seems like a lot but its only $20 for a 30 minute ride.  The taxi driver had no idea where we were going.  He had to stop at least 5 times and ask for directions.  We pointed numerous times to the address but he kept taking us to the wrong hotels.  He then wanted us to pay more but it was his fault that we were lost for half an hour so we only paid him what we were told at the airport.  We finally arrived at the Siam Star Hotel at about 12:30am!  We were so tired.  The hotel is fine. Its old but clean. We have our own room including a bathroom, fridge and air-conditioning.  You take these things for granted when you stay in hostels! haha.

Today we woke up around 10:30am but it felt like the middle of the afternoon.  I have never felt so weird after a time difference, not even when we lost a whole day flying to Fiji.  We walked around the streets of Bangkok today, taking in everything.  It is just crazy here, so much going on all at once.  The travel books warn you about Bangkok and how busy and crazy it is, but we would have never guessed it would be like this.  There are just so many people, cars, mopeds, tuk-tuks (small 3 wheel taxi) and pollution.  Our eyes hurt today from the smoke!  It is about 30-32 degrees today. Not that uncomfortable at all really.  Anything is better than Adelaide! 🙂

We walked around a few street markets today.  There are street vendors selling everything imaginable too, like food.  EVERYTHING IS INCREDIBLY CHEAP.  I knew things were cheap here but not this cheap!  27 baht equals $1.00 CAN.  For example, Ryan and I got a Dairy Queen blizzard each for 70 baht! For people with bad math skills, it is about $2.25 for both!  We used to pay almost $10 for both of ours back home.  Not just the food is cheap either, souvenirs, beer and clothes are all so cheap.  A nice polo shirt is about $5.00.

We were in a mall today that was bigger than Square One and we hear that is not even the biggest mall there is here!  Good stores too like Fendi, Gucci, etc.  YESSS!!

Anyways, we have only been here for 24 hours and there is already so much to say about this city.  We are going sigh-seeing tomorrow around a different part of Bangkok.  We are going to see the temples and do a walking tour.  Should be great!

We will update again soon.

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City of Melbourne

February 13th, 2009

We spent 5 nights in Melbourne.  It was sooo much better than Adelaide I think. So much prettier and more to do.  Ryan and I rode the free city circle tram a lot.  We went to the Victoria Market, Docklands and Waterfront city.  The market was huge and lots of good prices for souvenirs and fruit.

Everyone seemed worried about the bushfires that were going on here but we weren’t even close to them.  They were a few hours away from us.

The weather was so much better here too, it was about 20-25 everyday. Much better than the 45 degrees heat we had in Adelaide.  Our hostel was really good too, 4 bed share dorm, with a quiet chinese couple. 🙂

We heard that you can get money if you donate blood in Australia..mmm…so we went to the Red Cross and looked into this.  However, they had enough blood for that day and turned us away. haha.  I was embarassed to ask “Do you give money for our blood?” Sounds cheap. LOL

We changed our flights to come home early too! We will be home in March now.  I want to be home for Ashley’s pregnancy.  For the last few days planning our Thailand trip and getting things ready for the 8.5 hour flight!

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We are living in an Oven…

February 6th, 2009

Ryan and I have felt the hottest we have ever felt in our whole lives!! Are you ready for this?  118.4 fahrenheit! You know that breeze you get when you open the oven, thats what its like when we step out of our hostel!  Its unbelievable. I thought Cairns was hot, but it doesn’t even compare.  The air conditioners can’t keep up.  The city turned off the power on purpose yesterday! What the heck!  And our hostel owner is a tad cheap and turns of the air during the day and puts it on for a few hours at a time.  Terrible to sleep in!

We have spent the last 6 days in Adelaide and the first 4 days were spent in the worst hostel EVER!  Tattersalls it was called.  There was no running water, no air conditioning, no working fridge, and no toilet paper.  This we thought was unexceptable, but when we complained (first time ever complaining) and asked for our money back to go to another hostel we were told “This is not a 5 star hotel, and what do you expect, you are in hostel accomodation”.  We expect RUNNING WATER in 118 degree temperature!!!  We didn’t get our money back and had to spend 2 more nights there.  We then moved to another hostel across town. Much better but not the best. 

It has been so hot here its hard to do anything during the day.  One day we went to a free Art Gallery and a good market yesterday.  It was so hot last week that the market closed down and other shops do in the afternoon too.  The underground trains even closed because it was too hot down there?!!  Adelaide is a smaller city, hardly any highrises.  Its definetly not like Sydney or Melbourne.  I did not like it really, but that was probably because of the heat.  Ryan thought it was nice and quiet.

We are flying to Melbourne tonight and the heat wave is supposed to be over by tomorrow. It is going down to 25-27 this week.  Its going to feel downright cold to us after this!  We will need to pull out our jeans. haha.

 We weighed ourselves again today. We each lost 1 pound.  I’m at 121.6 and Ryan is at 213.  We made bets at how much more weight we are going to lose. We will see.

 We are spending 4 days in Melbourne.  I am looking forward to it because when we drove through it last week, it looked like a nice city. Lots to do.

Ryan and I played ping pong last night and I WON.  He was too cocky.  We played 3 games and I won two.  That ping pong table in the garage paid off I guess. lol.  He is sitting right beside me so I am not lying.

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Penguins, Koalas, Kangaroos, OH MY!!!

January 29th, 2009

Yesterday, we left the Frankston hotel and dropped Toni off in Melbourne after he sorted out his money/Visa situation and headed to the Great Ocean Road.  We did half yesterday and half today. You definetly need two days to do this road. There is so much to see.  It is 285 kms long.  It starts in Torquay and ends in Warnambaloo.  We stayed over night in Apollo Bay in a nice small hostel.

Yesterday, we stopped at a few different beaches and lookouts.  There are too many to name.  At this one lighthouse lookout we saw a small white dot on an island. We zoomed in on it and it turned out to be a lone penguin!  We wanted to see them in New Zealand but never got to, so now we got to see one, from afar but still!

Around 6:30pm, we were driving past a  field with some horses in it, and I saw some ‘deer’ and didn’t really think anything of it, but then I thought to myself “Wait a second, we are not in Canada, those aren’t deer, they are Kangaroos!!!” LOL.  I yelled “Stop, Kangaroos!!” and Ryan slammed on the brakes and we turned around.  We got some good pictures and video of them looking right at us.  We have seen lots of wallabies that we thought were kangaroos but there is no mistaking them now. Kangaroos are much bigger.  We were just saying that we need to see Kangaroos and Koalas before this trip is over. 🙂

The next morning we left Apollo Bay to do the rest of the Great Ocean Road.  There was a  lot to see on this last half of the road.  We drove a little ways down this side road to see a lighthouse.  While we were driving through this forest I spotted a Koala in the tree!! It was climbing up the tree really fast and that is how I spotted it.  We pulled the car over and walked in the woods a little bit to get a better look.  When we were taking some pictures of it I saw another one a few trees over.  They were kind of far away but you could still see them pretty good.  We were so excited we saw a wild Koala, we didn’t think we were going to.  And then when we were leaving this side road, Ryan said “imagine if we saw one just hanging over the road in the trees” and then I yelled “Stop, Koala!”  He didn’t believe me at first.  And there one was right beside the road in a tree.  It was about 10-15 feet up in the tree.  We got some great pictures of this one. It looked like it just woke up and had fuzzy hair sticking out everywhere! Lol.

We continued driving and stopping at the 12 Apostles, London Bridge (a rock that looks like the bridge), Bay of Islands, along with a lot of other scenic lookouts.

Overall the Great Ocean Road, lived up to its name, it is Great!  However, it was 43 degrees today and there were a million flies that would buzz and land right on your head whenever we got out of the car.  That was quite annoying.

On a side note, we weighed ourselves the other day in Frankston and Ryan weighed 218.8 lbs and I weighed 123.0lbs.  Ryan lost a lot of weight in the last few days because he was sick and had the flu, we think.  I never got sick though, so we are not sure what made him sick.

On another side note, we are in Jail!  Haha, not literally. We are staying in an old jail that has been converted into a hostel. $22/night.  We could have stayed in an old jail cell but they cost more! haha.  It has the old stone walls for the exercise area and big steel doors, with gates everywhere. Its actually really interesting.

We will write again when we get to Adelaide.

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Adventures/Disasters from Sydney to Melbourne

January 27th, 2009

What a crazy last few days we have had.  We started travelling south from Sydney with our friend Toni from Germany. We were going to give him a ride to Melbourne and he was going to split the cost of the car rental with us.  Everything was going well until we started looking for a hostel for the night.  There are no large towns from Sydney to Melbourne, just little tiny towns with less than 5000 people in them, therefore no hostels.  We stopped in Jervis Bay earlier in the day to see the whitest sand in the world. It was really white but I think Whitehaven in the Whitsundays was nicer, more fine.

So it is about 10pm and we still hadn’t found a hostel and we are out of gas and all these little towns close up, no gas stations were open.  The gas light was on so we couldn’t even drive further.  We thought we were going to have to sleep in the gas station parking lot!!  Ryan went to the police station to ask if they knew where a 24 hour gas station was and it happened that there was one just up the street. So we made it there but it was already closed but the owner was still there. He opened the pumps back up for us and we filled up.  We decided to drive through the night, taking turns driving. Ryan drove until 1230pm and then needed a rest so I drove for another 2 hours. We pulled over in a rest area and slept until 730am.  I was wedged in the back seat while the boys were sprawled out nicely in the front seats.  Worst SLEEP EVER! Lol.

So we got to Melbourne and there was not one hostel or cheap hotel in the whole city because of the Australian Open (tennis).  So we booked a small hotel room about an hour from Melbourne. We had no other choice because we were not sleeping in the car again!  It turned out to be a wonderful little hotel with a kitchenette and two beds.  We stayed for 3 nights.  Ryan got the flu while we were there so Toni and I just relaxed in the hotel room while Ryan slept.  It was actually really good.  BUT then this morning we woke up with our door open???  Why you ask? We were robbed!!! YES, someone actually came into our room while we were sleep and stole Toni’s pants and wallet!  He had everything in there, his memory stick, ID, money, Visa. Everything.  We reported it to the police and I guess we will see if anything shows up. Luckily nothing else was taken.  We just can’t believe someone would have the nerve to come into our room while we were sleeping there! I feel sick about that!!  OMG.

Anyways, we are dropping Toni off in Melbourne today at a hostel, he has some emergency money coming from Visa today and then Ryan and I are headed towards the Great Ocean Road and on to Adelaide for a few days.

We will write again after the Great Ocean Road.  Bye for now.

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Moving on…

January 22nd, 2009

Today we booked a rental car and are heading south to Melbourne, with a few stops along the way.  We couldn’t find work here so we have to move on. I have had enough of Sydney anyways.  Maybe there will be work around Melbourne, possibly fruit picking for a few weeks. We will see.

 We went to the Australian Museum yesterday.  It was really good.  Saw the dinosaur exhibit and Wildlife Photograph of the Year exhibit. It was really interesting.  Some great pictures were taken from all over the world.

 We weighed ourselves again and we lost more weight.  Lindsay is down to 123.2, January 22 and Ryan is at 221.8 now.  Ryan eats vegetables now. I put a little bit on his plate and he eats it without complaining (too much).  Last night he ate zucchini! HA.  I don’t know if he just eats it to shut me up or he actually wants to eat healthier.  ??? I don’t know. LOL

We will write again once we get a little more south.  Goodbye.

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Still in Sydney…

January 15th, 2009

Hello, not much to say on this blog entry but we are still in Sydney.  We don’t do much during the days.  Walk around the city, sit in the park, do on the internet.  We went to the Sydney Wildlife and Aquarium.  The Wildlife Park was better than the Aquarium I think.  We saw koalas for the first time in our lives! That was pretty awesome. Got lots of pictures. When my sister was in Australia in 2004, she got to hold one and get her picture taken with it but now it is illegal so you can pay $19.95 to stand beside one and get your picture done. BAH! Ridiculous.  Ryan and I got just as good as pictures for free!

 We also went to the Harbour Bridge and Opera House a couple times.  The Opera House is really neat.  We are going to put up some pictures today on Ryan’s facebook.  If you want to see the pictures just add him as a friend. 🙂  We took the ferry over there once and we went under the Harbour Bridge.  You can take ferries any where in Sydney.  To beaches, all around the harbours. Its really neat.  The harbour front is so pretty.  So much to do and see around there. Alot of neat shops and restaurants too.

 We have been looking for some jobs but no luck yet.

 We will update it again soon.

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Sydney

January 8th, 2009

We arrived in Sydney 3 nights ago.  The first two nights were awful.  Dirtiest hostels I have ever seen.  Reminded me of a horror movie.  I went to the washroom in the middle of the night and almost stepped on a cockroach the size of my fist! No blankets, no air conditioning.  I used my pillow as a blanket and Ryan had to fold his pillow 3 times to make it a decent pillow. LOL.  We only stayed there because we already booked it and would have lost our deposit.

We have finally found a decent hostel on a quieter street.  Its a 10 share hostel which means we have to share the room with 8 other very messy people, but at least its cleaner than the others.  Ryan stole some guys bed last night so now that guys gives Ryan dirty looks today. haha. 

 The first night Ryan really wanted an ice cream, so we walked the street of the red light district looking for change on the ground.  We aren’t exactly out of money but had no Australian money on us (as we dont want to pay the exchange rate).  It was quite embarrassing.  We wouldnt make very good bums as we only found about 15 cents. lol.  So no ice cream for Ryan.

We went to Bondi Beach today. It was huge.  The other day two hammerhead sharks were spotted there eating a giant squid.  We heard it on the radio.  The news said they had to sound the shark alarm to clear the beach.  We were wondering what this shark alarm would sound like…maybe the theme from Jaws??? 😛

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Offroading at Fraser Island

January 1st, 2009

On dec 26th we had are briefing for fraser island. Then went shopping with our new team.( 9 germans, Lindsay and me) We had a budget of $20 a person and had to get groceries for 3 days. Once everything was bought we only went over $2.80 a person. Its really hard to figure out what to but for 11 people that dont even know each other.

The following morning at 8:00 we loaded up are 4×4 and headed for the ferry. Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the wolrd and we were in for an amazing trip.  Everything is made of sand including the roads.  Once we pulled off the ferry it was right into it, flying along sand roads with huge holes and bumps. It was awesome. We hit one bump so hard I hit my head off the roof!

The first stop was lake Mckenzie. The sand was white and the water was so clean you can drink right out of the lake and so of course we did. We then drove through the rainforest to Eurong and set up camp on the beach.  We were all sitting around talking and drinking goon (crappy wine) when all of a sudden we saw a DINGO!  It was about 5 feet from where we were sitting.  Lindsay yelled “Dingo, Dingo, Dingo” but no one was paying attention!! and it started to take our garbage so we jumped up and scared it away.  The next morning there were four more around our camp.  We packed up heading Lake Wabby.  It was a 2 km walk through the desert to this lake!!! OMG. It was 33 degrees out so sunny.  No water neither.  All  you could see was sand! It was like the Sahara! haha.  After our quick dip in this lake, we walked back through the desert back to our truck and headed to the Maheno shipwreck.  Its this old ship that was built the same year as the titanic and washed up on Fraser Island in 1935.  It was really neat to be up close to this rusty old ship.  We all drove north to Indian Head and had to go through some really deep sand that almost every truck got stuck in.  I was driving so of course we didnt get stuck. haha.  Everyone cheered for us. It was great.  We camped that night at an Aboriginal Camp.  We drank and played games around the fire with everyone. This was a really fun night.  The next morning we went to Eli Creek which is this crystal clear stream that runs to the ocean.  You just sit in it and it takes you all the way down.  It was really refreshing.  We stayed there for a little bit and left there to drive back through the rainforest towards the ferry.  That was the end of our trip.  I liked this trip better but Lindsay like the Whitsundays sailing trip better.  They were both great though.

PS – In the Gold Coast on January 1, we weighed ourselves. Lindsay weighed 125.8 and I weighed 224.  I am down 10 pounds since we begun this trip.  Lindsay is making me eat healthy I guess.

 We spent New Years on the beach in Coolangatta. We watched some fireworks and had a few drinks with two of our australian roomates. It was a nice and relaxed new years.

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