James and Cat’s Jazz-tastic Journey!

Hello everyone and sorry it’s been so long since we posted.

Well, we had a thoroughly enjoyable time on Thong Nai Pan beach in Ko Pha Ngan; we just lazed around and did nothing, but reluctantly we left paradise and headed back to Bangkok to catch our flight to Mumbai…

We caught the flight no probs, but didn’t end up in Mumbai!  We had a couple of hours stop over in Calcutta before going on to Mumbai and we just decided not to get back on the plane!  So we spent two night in Calcutta, which is a mad, crazy, filthy city and then made a rather extravagant decision…  Instead of firming the 20 hour train journey to Delhi, we flew instead!

We arrived in Delhi today, a few hours ago in fact, and made our way to the main bazaar which is lined with hotels.  We treated outselves to a room with a TV and we watched as much of Chocolat as James could handle before demanding that I turn this cack off and we’ll go and get some food.

We have 6 nights in Delhi before we fly to Budapest, so enough time to do some sightseeing (the Taj Mahal is a must for me) and some last minute shopping while James isn’t looking…

We’ll try and got some more photos up soon, but it may be a while as the computers here are sloooooow!

Love to you all xxx

We put up some more photos…. you should check them out.

The new folders are in Thailand…. labelled Kanchanaburi and there’s new one’s in Bangkok.. not sure if they’re all in the right place but they will be soon.

Love x

Hello everyone.

This is to be our shortest blog yet!

We are currently on Ko Phangan out in the sticks and the internet is EXTORTIONATE!!!!  So we’ll fill in all the details later.  We’ll be back in the Bangkok on the 24th to get our flight to India so we’ll be in touch then.  Just don’t think we’re dead if you don’t hear from us in the next week!

Love Love xxxx

So, after our snap decision to stay in Thailand we booked a bus and the next morning were on our way to Kanchanaburi to see the famous Bridge over the River Kwai.  We arrived and checked into a delightful little place called The Jolly Frog and went immediately out to see the sights.. we went and saw the bridge and the nearby WWII museum, which seemed to cover all wars, not just WWII, and had no grasp whatsoever of how to handle the sensitive subject of war.  It’s description of the Atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima was that the “town was destroyed in a jiffy” and there was a statement on the wall written by some Thai historian which seemd to say that yes, the treatment of the POW’s who built the railway and the bridge was indeed terrible but now it brings lots of tourism to Kanchanaburi, so maybe it wasn’t so bad after all!  I don’t know whether some things just got lost in translation but it was the worst museum I’ve ever been in!

Ok, so the main reason for this blog was for me to tell you all about the weird experience that was visiting the Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi…. so here it goes…

Tiger Temple.  The strangest and most morally confusing place I’ve ever been.
The set up is the monks in a temple not far from Kanchanaburi have, over the last few years, taken in tigers that were formerly mistreated.  They have 26 tigers ranging from 9 years to 2 months old.
So the temple adopted them, gave them a home, fed them, and turned them into a tourist attraction.
You pay 300 baht (about 5 pounds) to enter the site and your first stop is ‘Tiger Canyon’, a small canyon where hoardes of tourists queue up to have their picture taken with the tigers.  You can either have the ‘regular’ photo, where you just stroke the tigers, or you can pay 1000 baht (about 15 pounds) to have a ‘special’ photo where you sit with the tiger’s head in your lap.
We queued up for the regular photo; I was growing more and more uneasy by the second.  When we reached the front I saw my anxiety was justified.  Spread out around the canyon were ten to twelve tigers chained up and sprawled soporific on the ground, occasionally twitching their tails but otherwise paying little to no attention to the masses of people around them.  There are whispers that the tigers are drugged to keep the mellow, though the temple’s explanation is that tigers are naturally nocturnal animals, and when you see them in the afternoon, especially just after they’ve been fed, of course they’ll be dozy.
It almost sounds plausible, but being something of a cynic, I harboured my doubts as to the truth of this.
Each tiger had three or four handlers and when my turn came a guide lead my by the hand to each tiger where she took 3 or 4 photos each time of me stroking them.
I don’t know if I can fully explain the raging battle being fought in my head.
Every fibre of my being was screaming that this was hideously wrong, exploitative in the extreme; why would a temple who claim to look after these tigers subject them daily to mass manhandling by crass gawping tourists?  These mighty beasts reduced to a dopey photo opportunity.
But there was a small voice in my head which I couldn’t silence whispering “But this is amazing!”  When and where else would I be able to get so close as to be able to touch a tiger?  Stroke the silky fur, feel the warmth of their bodies and the slow thud of their heartbeat?  To tickle the belly of a cub like it was an overgrown kitten?  To be so close to such raw power and yet be safe from it? 
My selfish pleasure at being so close to a truly ‘wild animal’ was hard to stifle despite my overwhelming certainty that this was purely and simply wrong.
The temple claim all the money the recieve is being ploughed into the building of an island where they can release the tigers into a more ‘natural’ habitat.
Wandering around the place there was certainly evidence of lots of building work.  One fibre glass construction we walked past was what appeared to be a stage!  Modelled to look like the jungle with three tiers and doorways in the back leading to cages behind.
After what I’d seen in the canyon the purpose of this edifice does not bear thinking about.
The sad truth of the matter is that no matter what ‘natural environment’ is being built to house the tigers, none of them can ever be released into the wild.  None of the animals have even the slightest wariness of humans and would soon find themselves at the wrong end of a poachers gun.
The whole experience left me with a strange mingling of amazment and revulsion.  The tigers are not mistreated; they’re not beaten, and are well fed and cared for.  But does this necessarily mean they’re being treated well?
Not for a long time has my concience been so cruelly torn at and despite my moral outrage, I cannot deny that when I laid my hands on those great cats it was one of the most wonderful feelings I’ve ever had.

James though it was really fun.

Anyway we spent a couple of days in Kanchanburi and are now back in Bangkok for a few hours waiting for a train to take us to the border with Laos, where we plan to spend some time exploring the south which we didn’t really see at all last year.

Tom: The instuctor didn’t actually say don’t open your eyes with contact lenses in but it’s kind of obvious that you shouldn’t as they will just float away.  However, I’m so used to swimming without contacts that it’s natural for me to open my eyes under water.

Susan: We have to go back to India as our flight to Budapest leaves from Delhi.  I really liked India, but Cat had a hard time dealing with the attitude of the Indian men.  Also, it’s pushing 40 degrees and pissing it down there at the moment!  There’s also a few places in South East Asia that we regret not going to last time so now we get the opportunity to see those. 

Diving: I’m going to try and do some fun dives when we’re back in the South of Thailand, other than that I’ll have to wait until we’re in Greece.  I will eventually do the Great Barrier Reef and the Reefs of East Coast Central America, but not this trip!  It’s made the list of things to do before I’m 30!

Much Love
xxx

So as you can tell I passed the course with flying colours, as does everyone, and I am now officially a certified diver.  This means I can dive anywhere in the world to a maximum depth of 18m/59 feet, and enroll in advance and specialist diving courses! Awesome!

So the course: We started with an orientation at 16:30 before our first day.  We had to buy our Padi open water manual, a 400 page book, similar to the old school work books, lots of babble and some questions to go along with it.  Then I met the group I would be diving with, 4 of us in total, although one guy was doing the 3 day course, instead of 3 and a half, so he would only be with us for the pool diving and classroom lessons. So mainly it was me and two Danish guys, the quiet type but really nice when you got something out of them.  We had a chat about what the couse would entail, two classroom sessions, one pool session and 5 open water dives.  We then headed upstairs to watch a 2 hour video, which was basically the first 2 chapters of the maual in visual form. It was really badly made and was obviously an older persons view of what keeps us youngens engaged.  Really bad humour involving big hats and people falling over…gripping stuff.  It basically just went over the basics of diving, and the physics behind water, pressure and oxygen, the basics of the gear involved and what diving was all about.  We were told to not pay too much attention as the video is just a mandatory part of the course, we would get told more details in our classroom sessions and it was all in the book anyway.

Day 1
Started at 9:00 at the dive shop ready and eager to learn, a morning spent in the class room. We were shown all the required equipment, Buoyancy Control Devices, Tanks, Regulators, Weights, Masks and Fins.  We had a quick lesson in how to fit it all together, and the do’s and dont’s; Do turn the air on before you jump in, Don’t throw weights at each other, all the need to know stuff.  After a 2 hour lunch break we were back for some pool time.  We met our dive instructor, a english lad called Adam who had an obsession with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers; Tattoos’, T-Shirts, Swim Shorts, he had it all. We had another quick lesson on how to put the gear together, jumped in to our flattering wet suits and proceeded with the ‘Buddy Checks’ .  Whenever you dive you have to dive with a buddy, for various reasons, safety being the front runner. So each person checks their buddy’s equipment, and you dive close together for the whole dive, and if you die it’s your buddy’s fault.  The buddy check follows a simple plan: BCD, Weights, Releases, Air, Final Ok.  Many people have tried to come up with easy ways to remember this, Padi’s way  is Begin with Review and Friend, it doesn’t make much sense so we were offered these; Bruce willis Ruins/Rocks All Films, Bangkok Women Really Are Fellas and British women really are fat!  Then it was time to commence diving, so we jumped in the pool and it was straight to the shallow end. The padi couse has being designed so you start slowly and build on the skills you learn until you are a diving god, so the first thing we did was to put the regulator (Mouth Piece that gives you the air) in our mouths and stand heads out of the water breathing! One small breath for man…. After conquering breathing, we then steped up to the next level and put our heads underwater, scary stuff.  When Adam was sufficiently pleased with our progress, we did the same thing except with out our mask, that was actually a lot harder, because the instinct is to breathe in through your nose, and if you do that you will almost definitely choke!  Good job Adam is a trained first aider! I am also used to opening my eyes underwater, but I was told it is easier to dive with contact lenses than a prescription mask, as otherwise you would have to leave the mask on the whole time, and look a bit silly. So without the mask the first thing I did when I submerged my head was to open my eyes, then remembering I had contacts in I panicked and what do you do to alleviate panicking?  Take a deep breath!  So I took a deep breath through my nose and got a lung full of water, much to the the amusement of the other guys. Second time round went a lot more smoothly, and I quickly mastered no mask underwater-ness.  Then we sank down under water on to our knees to practice some ‘skills’. These included taking the regulator out of our mouth and then replacing it, flooding and clearing the mask, mask removal and replacement, swimming without masks, no air simulation (Adam’s favorite bit, he turns off our air just for fun!) We did many variations of these skills, as they are apparently essential to diving, except we couldnt really see when we would need these, diving seems to be completly based around safety, even though it is statistically a safer sport then ten pin bowling. FACT!

After mastering the shallow end it was time to enter the big boy leauge and step up to the deep end. We did the same stuff, just practiced the skills and some variations, buddy breathing, changing your regulator for your buddy’s spare, just in case Adam turns off your air again. After spending some time getting used to being underwater is was time to come up again. A quick lesson in how to wash the gear after use and we were done for the day and it was time to retire to the bar, didn’t quite make it that far though, so bed it was.

Day 2
Another 9.00 start, and it was back to the classroom for us, 15 of us in total, our group and the groups a day ahead of us, it was time to learn the nitty gritty stuff, what can go wrong and what to do if it does.  Most people think if you’re underwater and something goes wrong you should get out of the water as quick as possible, these people would be right so that was a relatively short session.  We did learn a little about narcosis though, the narcs. Once you get past 30 metres your air becomes more dense and you breathe in more to maintain a state of alive, while you are taking in more oxygen you also take in more nitrogen as the tank is filled with regular air, around 80 20 nitrogen to oxygen. This added nitrogen can have some crazy effects. Similar to having 5 beers, or 2 joints (thats the offical padi measurment) These effects do however wear off instantly with no ill effects if you ascend only a few metres. Sounds great, drunk with no money on beer and no hangover, someone needs to set up an underwater bar!  The nitrogen can however, give you DCS, De-compression Sickness, the bends if you ascend too quickly! That can kill you, although it never does.  We also had a quick look at how to plan dives properly so you don’t get the dreaded bends, basically don’t stay underwater for too long, all pretty straightforward.  So with all the worst bits out of the way it was time to start diving, that is after lunch. We quickly learned that diving is a lazy mans sport, everything should be done with minimum effort and after lunch, or at least a quick beer. So we met back at the shop at 1 to head out on the boat.
Our first dive site was to be Japanese Gardens, a buoyed of area of the bay of a small island to the north of Koh Tao called Koh Aungnuan. We swam up to the shallow end of the bay and found a sandy spot to sink down and drop to our knees to practice some skills. We started with the old favourite mask removal, and regulator changes, we were getting quite good at these, then moved on to some new ones, fin piovts. This is basically where you lay flat on your face on the sand, and take a really deep breath, you should begin to rise keeping you fins on the floor, then when you get to around 45 degrees, you start to breathe out and you start to sink again, you carry on doing this so you start to pivot about your fins, up and down. Very difficult to master at first as even subtle changes in your lungs greatly affect your buoyancy. We spent some time practicing this one as it is very important to scuba diving. The aim being that you solely use your lungs as a buoyancy device so you are not constantly swimming up or down and using your hands, that way you use up less air and can stay under the water for longer.  After several pivots we moved on to hovering, a similar exercise in breathing but completely suspended in mid water. Not as easy as it sounds.
When we were done with our skills we went for a swim around, going to a depth of around 6 metres. It sounds backwards but it is actually easier to dive at greater depths than it is in shallower waters, this is all due to pressure and pressure changes.  At 10 metres, the pressure compared to surface pressure is double, and at 20 metres it is triple. So when you move from 0 to 10 metres you are doubling pressure but when you move from 10 to 20 metres you do not go through the same change in pressure.  What does this actually mean?  Well, when you’re diving you need to equalise, this is when the pressure that builds up inside your ears needs to be released, similar to when you fly or go to high altitudes, you feel the pop in your ears, underwater it is a lot more intense, and you need to clear your ears.  If you descend to quickly without equalising it really is quite painful, and the only way to get rid of it without damaging your ears is to ascend, then equalise, then descend again. From 0 to 10 metres you need to equalise once a metre, roughly.  From 10 to 20 its around once every 2 metres. So when you are diving shallow waters it is more likely you will suffer from some equalisation problems, as I did. I would be swimming along focusing on my buoyancy and trying to keep on the same level as the instructor and I would see a really cool fish, and forget what I was doing and take a really deep breath, that would cause me to go up, then I would panic and breathe even deeper, going further up. I then let out all my air to get back down to the sea bed and descend too quickly leading to pain in my ears, causing me to breathe in deeply and ascend again. It really was a vicious cycle. Eventually I got the hang of it, but I didnt dare look at the fish for fear of losing concentration, just listen to the bubbles and think about breathing.

Day 3
Had the morning off to relax, then at 12:30 it was time to start some real diving. We headed off in a taxi to the pier and jumped on the medium sized boat.  Our first dive was to be a site called Green Rock, down to a depth of 12 metres.  We went down a buoy line and swam around, saw quite a few amazing fish and had a really good dive. Really got the hang of the buoyancy thing and didn’t have any problems at all, felt like we’d being doing it for years. After 40 minutes underwater we were running low on air, so it was time to jump back on the boat and head off to our second dive site, Mango bay. We went over a few skills and had to do a CESA ascent. This is where you come up from the bottom in just one breath. Quite easy really, then is was down to some sand for some more hovering, pivots and mask removals. Then another swim around and some more fish. The last skill we came to do was a buddy breathing ascent. This is where you simulate being out of air and use your buddy’s spare regulator and come up together. We stopped on the sand to prepare ourselves, had a look around, and to my dismay, I couldn’t find my buddy!  Yoko, the dive master in training, who has spent over 100 hours underwater, had somehow lost us in one of the easiest dive sights to navigate. I found it very amusing but our instructor wasn’t impressed.  Yoko’s punishment was to wash and pack all our gear ready for the next day. Apart from that we had a really good day, but we were all shattered by the time we got back to base at around 1700 so a quick dinner then off to bed for an early rise the next morn.

Day 4
We had to be at the base at 7:20, for two morning dives. So it was up to the pier and on the big boat, and out to a dive spot called South West Pinnacle, surprise surprise, it is South West of the island and a massive pinnacle! We went down to 18 metres, down to the sea floor and swam around the pinnacle and a few smaller ones and then up round the pinnacle to the top which sat at around 5 metres, then back to the buoy line and up again. We were down for around 50 mintes and had a really good dive, saw lots of angel fish and butterfly fish along with loads of other small ones. We had all really mastered the buoyancy thing by now so were really focused on what we could see and where we were going.

Then it was back on the boat to the last dive of the course. White rock, you guessed it, a big white rock underwater.  Again we had a few last skills to do, nothing new here, just a mask removal and some hovering and some pivots to finish off.  Then we went for a swim around to see what the fish were up to, and we found hiding behind some rocks two stingrays, each with a wing span of around 50cm, purple and light pink in colour. They had a look at us but didn’t like what they saw so swam off. It was really amazing to see them, it really is as if they are flying underwater, absolutely amazing.

After filling in a quick exam and doing some paper work I was awarded my diver’s log book and diver’s card, and I am now offically a certified diver!

We hung around on the island for a couple more days, just chilling out… I had done a lot of this while James was out diving, but a bit more is always good!

So back in Bangkok and time for our spending spree!  We spent stupid amounts of money!  It was ACE!
Our first port of call was the HUGE weekend market where James got some Converse, I got some appropriate cover up clothing for india and we both bought some wicked T-shirts.  The on to MBK the ultra swathe shopping centre in the heart of Siam.  I bought a really cool bag that I’d seen last time we were in the BKK, James got a 30gb iPod and I got a new phone (the Motorola V8.. it’s swish) to replace the stolen one.  Then back to Th Khao San and James got a really awesome pair of shoes that he’d seen before and hadn’t forgotten about.  We got back to our hotel room laden with bags and very achy feet!
The next day we went about sending our new purchases home, along with various junk we’ve acquired along the way that we wanted to get rid of… James’ Padi Manual, I had some books I wanted to keep, clothes we weren’t wearing and various pairs of shoes between us.  We filled up a box with 8kg of stuff!!! My bag is a lot lighter now, but somehow James’ seems to have got heavier!

So after two days of materialism we got an early night in preparation for our flight to Mumbai the next day.. our flight left at 9:40am, we had to be at the airport two hours before so we booked the bus for 6am.
At 6.05am we were awoken by a loud knock at the door…. the alarm I had set the night before had failed to wake us up, but the irate Thai man shouting that we had to get on the bus now managed where technology had failed.  So we scrambled out of bed, thankfully we had packed the night before, threw some clothes on and were out the door.
Into the minibus and both of us were feeling a little rough, most of the journey was spent in silence until, when approaching the airport, James said “I want to go back to bed, do you think we’ll be allowed to change our flight?”  My response was sharp…. he knew that I wasn’t looking forward to going back to India and to joke about staying in Thailand wasn’t funny in the slightest.  The silence returned.
When we arrived at the airport I just couldn’t help myself…. and asked James if he was being serious about staying, because I really wanted to but didn’t think we could afford to change the flights.  Despite our late rise, the bus still managed to get us there half an hour before the quoted arrival time; we decided there was only one way to find out if we could afford it… find out how much it would cost.
So we went and found the Jet Airways desk and explained to the lady that our flight was at 9.40 but we wanted to change it to fly to Delhi on the 1st July.  “Sorry” She said “you can only change the date, not the destination.”  This didn’t put us off, we’d need a few extra days to travel up to Delhi from Mumbai, but we could manage that, so after plugging in different dates we finally found one when there was space for us to go.  Our next question, of course, was how much would it cost to change the flight especially at such sort notice….. her next words were music to our ears… “no charge Miss, it’s a free service”.

Well, that was that… so we’re still in Bangkok, out flight has been rearranged to the 25th June, which leaves us a week in India and another 3 weeks in Thailand.  We think we may head into Laos or Malaysia, but as yet we have no fixed plans… we only seem to ignore them anyway!

So that’s what we’ve been up to… we’ll let you know when we decide what we’re doing and where we’re headed.

Much Love
xxx

(James thought of that title.  He’s just started his dive course and finished reading ‘From Russia With Love’… I bear no responsibility)

When we last left you we were on the stupidly expensive island of Koh Phi Phi, vowing that we would leave as soon as possible as it was killing our budget.  We ended up spending five nights there!
On our wanderings about town we happened across a rickety looking shack with a hand made sign outside declaring it to be a ‘Batik School’.  Not one to judge a book by it’s cover, I went in and got chatting to the guy who ran the place.  He was a young looking Thai guy (though that’s no indication of his age, he could have been 50, Thai people just seem blessed with youthful looks) called Bay, who’d lived on the island for ten years and had owned a batik shop before the tsunami, but had invariably lost everything when it struck.  He’d finally been able to get together the money to build a new shop and buy new equipment but he hadn’t been open very long, and apologised profusely for the lack of batik paintings on the walls and the and the general ‘rough and readiness’ of the place in general.  There was no need to apologise, however, as he’d already won me over! The batiks he did have up were amazing, and he was so friendly and helpful; when I was enquiring about a batik course, he said it was a one day thing, but if didn’t want to get up early I could spread it over two days, he also assured me that it didn’t matter whether or not I could draw because “if a picture is made with feeling it will be beautiful… drawing doesn’t matter, it’s feeling that matters”.  Excellent!

So, I arranged to go back the next day and start my course.  I spent the evening scrawling various designs in James’ notepad, constantly frustrated that I couldn’t draw the way I wanted, but I let myself be comforted by Bay’s words, and the next morning I went to his shop confident that I could make something awesome!

We started off with a cup of tea, a fag and chat about life in general.  Then, to business.  (I am now going to give you a blow by blow account of how a batik is made, whether you want to know or not!)  Firstly you take a plain white piece of cotton and pull it taut over a wooden frame.  To make it stick Bay used the technique of melting wax over the frame, leaving it to dry, then placing the material over and using a coin to rub the cotton onto the wax and make it stick.  Then comes the drawing!  You sketch out your design in pencil (a rubber can be used so it didn’t matter about mistakes, thank god!) making sure not to press too hard or you can still see it when you’ve finished.
Right, ok, I was thinking, this isn’t too hard… then comes the wax!  Bay used a small gas canister with a grill on top to heat his pan of candle wax until it was runny and smoking.  The tool used to apply the wax, was simple yet effective.  A long handled device with a hollow ball at one end with a hole in the top (into which you pour the wax) which tapers into a narrow tube which is used like the nib of a pen.  Not a great description I know so I found some pictures  These are the closest I can find to what we were using…. though I’m sure there’s less primitve devices out there… but I quite liked primitive!
Then it’s just a question of filling up the ball and drawing over the sketch in wax, being careful not to spill any drops onto the picture (I managed to do this twice… I had a really shaky hand!) and taking care to empty and refill the ball every couple of lines drawn, in case the wax drys and clogs up the applicator.  It took me forever! I was so slow, and my hand was shaking like that of a recovering alcoholic!  But Bay was very patient, and said my all mistakes could be fixed, and considering I was new at this, I was doing very well.
The wax only takes about five minutes to dry and then you can start painting.  This is the fun bit.. the paints are water based.  From what Bay was saying, he imports them in powder form from Malaysia (I think he said they come from some kind of tree) and they cost him 15 quid a kilo!  He then does some witchcraft with water and boling and voila.. there is paint!  There’s just so much you can do with them… depending on how much water you use it changes the shade of the colour.. if you put water on the cotton first it gives it a pale eerie look, and if you drop small clumps of salt on the paint when it’s still wet, it makes an almost cloudlike pattern.  I should probably explain, that it’s not really painting, you just daub a line of paint on and watch it spread across the cotton, filling up all the gaps to the wax.  It’s so cool.
Then it’s just a question of waiting for the paint to dry, applying the fixing agent (so you can wash it without the colours running), then putting newspaper over it and ironing the wax off.  Leaving you with crisp white lines and bold blocks of colour. 

I had so much fun doing it, and I am quite pleased with the final result.. it may not be perfect but I did put a lot of feeling into it!

So I spent two days doing that, and eventually we left Koh Phi Phi, getting a boat over to Krabi, then a bus to Surat Thani.  We spent one night in Surat Thani, to break up the journey, then the next morning got a boat over to Koh Tao.

This is where I end my part of the story… tune in in the next couple of days to hear James’ enthralling tales!

Much Love x

Well, since our last post we have been on a mega journey! 

We left Chiang Rai on the 13th… we got a four hour bus to to Chiang Mai, where we spent a couple of hours playing pool and at 6pm got on a night bus down to Bangkok.  We arrived in Bangkok at 6am the following morning, checked straight into a cheap hotel and SLEPT!!  We spent one uneventful night in the BKK then jumped on ANOTHER night bus down to a little town called Hat Yai.  Well, we first arrived at Surat Thani at 6am, then it was another four hours on a mini bus to Hat Yai! 

The plan was to head into Malaysia, spend a few nights in Kuala Lumpour then travel over to the Perinithian Islands on the East coast, for James to do his diving.  However, after the mammoth amount of buses we’d take in the last few days, we just couldn’t face any more!  We only have two weeks left before we fly back to India and we decided we didn’t want to spend it on a bus!  We did however need to  do a visa run, so when we arrived in Hat Yai, we jumped on a another mini bus that took us to the border and we succesfully negotiated our firs visa run…. on arriving at the border we were approached by a man with a motorbike who charged is the equivalent of about 90p to drive us over the border and bring us back…. deal done!  It only took about ten minutes, but now we have another 30 days in Thailand… if only we could use them all! 

We spent a night in Hat Yai, and planned what we were going to do next.  We eventually decided, after much deliberation to head to a little island called Koh Phi Phi (Pronounced Pee Pee, hence the highly amusing blog title) off the Andaman coast, this was the island that was worst hit by the tsunami.  It seemed perfect, a chance to put something back into their economy and help the place back on it’s feet in our own small way and James could do his diving.  So today we got a bus from Hat Yai to Krabi , then a boat over to Phi Phi. 

The island is MAD!  It in no way needs any help from us in geting back on it’s feet… it has them firmly planted in the tourist trade already!  The place is flourishing, which is good for the locals but not so good for us… it’s the most expensive place we’ve been in Thailand, worse even than Bangkok.  There’s loads of ‘two week tourists’ here, wheeling their enormous suitcases to their luxury resorts.  We’ve found ourselves a reasonbly priced room, relative to the rest of the island, but double what we’d usually pay.  James has also decided not to do his dive course here, as it’s 40 pounds more expensive than on Koh Tao.. which is where we think we’ll head next, maybe in a couple of days.

We have had some VERY bad luck however… on the night bus from Bangkok to Hat Yai we were robbed.  I had my phone stolen from my bag and there was about 30 pounds missing from the wallet.  James also had his credit card stolen from his bag (and the gits have tried to use it) … excuse my language, but, THEIVING BASTARDS!!!  Sorry, had to get that off my chest! 

So that’s what we’ve been up to, sorry this is quite a brief blog, but like everything else on the island, the interweb is very expensive, so I’m afraid I’ll have to cut this short.

We’ll let you know of any further developments… you should take a look at a map though and see the travelling we’ve done over the past few days… it’s a hell of a long way!

Bye for now
Much Love
xxxxxxxx

So we finally got out of Chiang Mai and got a local bus 3 hours north east to small town called Chiang Rai. This hold a special place in our hearts as it was the very first stop on our trip last year, and it hasn’t lost any of its charm. It is basically a smaller version of Chiang Mai, located 50km from the golden triangle, which makes it a haven for local tribes people to come and sell their products. There are around 5 big tribes located in the area and many other smaller tribes. Part of the charm of Chiang Rai is the lack of attention tourists get; coming up from Bangkok where all westerners are bombarded with offers of drink, drugs, girls, and taxi rides, it is very pleasant to be able to walk around the night market and not even conjure looks.

Of an evening the whole town seems to gravitate towards the huge night market, where there are two stages packed with locals showing off their talent for dancing, singing, or dressing up in women’s clothes and miming… quite a hit with the locals. The local food is also delightful, ranging from a DIY soup to whole fish and KFC style chicken and chips, all for ridiculously little money.  After the night market many people head round the corner to the bars and snooker halls until the early hours. So on Friday night we thought ‘when in Rome’ and headed down to bar street to find somewhere with a pool table.  And what luck we had; we stumbled across a small bar called ‘Cat Bar’… if the name didn’t sell it the tabby sat in the door way seem like a pretty good sign that we had found our watering hole for the evening. We were led in by the owner, Sam and his wife, an ageing couple who were unable to bear children and so had many cats instead, hence the name. Once inside we were told that there was a jam session on tonight; Sam (who apparently played all instruments) would be performing with a local expat and David, which was followed by a long stare and then ‘You know david?’ Quite a curious question we thought… should we know David?  Is he some kind of local hero? Well, no, it turns out he used to play guitar for James Brown.  Yes, that’s right, the soul legend that is James Brown! Playing in a jam session in bar that has egg boxes on the walls for sound proofing!  In Chiang Rai, a quiet trading cross roads with a population of only 73,000 this is where we found a guitar legend! We really couldn’t believe our luck. But before we were gifted with the aural pleasures of old school rock, we had the visual delights of Sam playing pool. He does own the bar and pool table so you would expect him to be quite good, but when Cat took up the offer she was thrashed…. and he played the whole game using only one hand! Amazing!

So roll on 22:00 and in strolls and ageing, bald, black man, who had more soul than anyone I’ve ever met, he picks up a guitar and kicks straight in to some Pink Floyd, followed by Mustang Sally then All Along the Watchtower, to which he did an amazing solo, completely behind his head!  The 6 people in the bar were blown away! Unfortunately we didn’t have our camera with us, but Sam assures us he will be back on Monday so we can go back and get trigger happy with the camera.

Today we woke up, a little the worse for wear, around midday.  Last night was Paul’s leaving do as he left for Laos today.  We have been travelling with him for around 2 weeks now so we had to send him of in style; lots of pool and lots of beer.  However, as it’s election time we weren’t technically allowed to drink alcohol, so when you buy a bottle of beer you have to drink it out of tea cup and keep the bottle in the fridge. We looked like doughnuts cheersing with tea cups, the locals were quite amused. So today we headed out to a Wat around 15 km out of town; Wat Rong Kunh designed and built by a local artist renowed for bringing Buddhism into the new age. So instead of the usal gold and gaudily painted buildings, it was adorned in white with mirrored inlays, An amazing feat of architecture and artistry as well as a very holy place and one that attracts many pilgrims. In terms of response from the locals, it’s similar to the Louvre in Paris.  While many hail it as a genuis, some still think it has no place as a Buddhist temple as it is so different and out of the norm. Inside for instance, instead of the usual murals depicting the stages of Buddhas life, the artist has taken a modern twist on the idea of Samsara “the concept of a cycle of birth and consequent decay and death, in which all beings in the universe participate and which can only be escaped through enlightenment” (Wikipedia).  His murals instead depict such far flung images as the planes hitting the twin towers and Neo from the Matrix.  Strange and shocking, yes, but in their ability to draw the viewer in and lead the eye from one image to the next, incredibly powerful.  We have taken many pics and loaded them on to the website so you can make your own mind up, unfortunately, photography is forbidden inside the Wat, so you’ll have to take our word for the sheer power of the murals.

Talking of pictures, we have been having some troubles with the site we were using… it’s a heap of crap! So as Tom advised, we have switched back to our old site.  You can follow the link at the side ‘OUR PHOTOS!!’ We have organised the pictures by country and town, you can also browse our pictures from last years trip as well, if you feel the need.

If you have any troubles or suggestions or just want to say how much you love us, just drop us a comment.

peace and love
xxxxx

Not a lot has happened since our last blog; we stayed in Pai for a few more days, moving between Ed’s burger house, the two cinemas and Re-tox bar.  Ed is an old American war vet who set up shop in Pai 3 years ago and still does the best food with good old fashioned American service. He imports all his meat from Australia, makes everything himself… even the BBQ sauce and doesn’t serve anything that could vaguely be considered healthy! Over our 6 days in Pai we ate our way through his menu.

The cinemas or ‘Private viewing Rooms’ are just places that have a huge selection of DVD’s and you just rent one and watch it on one of their big screens.

Re-tox is an awesome bar run by a 20 something bloke from ‘not so Great Yarmouth’.  His main aim in life is to make sure everyone is as drunk as him, so when you order a drink, any drink, you get a free shot, and if over the course of your stay you have five drinks of something you get one free, and if he thinks things are quiet or slow, he comes round and dishes out more free shots!  A 600ml bottle of beer is just under 1 pound, but with all the freebies its always a good night out!
There were also a few other bars which played live music, so after Retox closed at 12 we would all jump in the back of a pick up truck and head down the road to BeBop, slightly more expensive but there were a few bands that cover the greats, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Beatles. When BeBop closed at 1 it was all back in the pick up and up the hill to FUBAR, which just so happened to be the pick up drivers bar (what a coincidence) and stayed open till 6 in the morning! The first time we went up there, 12 or so of us had clambered into the pick up and were admiring the comfort and design of the most widely used vehicle in the world, when the back tail gate flew open and the three girls were thrown from the pick up and landed on there bums .  There was a moments silence, and when it was discovered that they were very much alive there were roars of laughter… We all decided it best to walk the last 200 metres up the hill!

The weather did deteriorate slightly while we were there; we just caught the edge of the cyclone that hit Burma, so over the last few days in Pai it was constantly raining! Bit of a bummer but if it hadn’t being raining we may have stayed there indefinitely. So after 6 days of eating, drinking and watching movies we got back on a mini bus heading to Chaing Mai, with the aim of doing some washing and heading straight up to Chaing Rai, around 4 hours north……………. 3 days later we are still in Chaing Mai.

We were going to head out yesterday, but we went out to watch the football, then realised we had wifi in our room so I stayed up till 3 using MSN on Cat’s iPod touch, so we slightly overslept, thought we would stay another day and head out this morning.

 So we got up checked out and made our way to the bus station, we arrived there at midday to be told buses were booked till 15:30.  So we jumped back in a tuk tuk and checked back in to our accomadation, the lady looked very confused.  Our excursion to the bus station wasnt entirely wasted though, we have booked a bus for 11:00 tommorrow morning, so provided we get up in time we should be out of here by then.

Our plans have slightly changed again; The gibbon experience took so long to get back to us and weren’t answering our calls, that we ran out of time, they are fully booked until the 12th, which wouldnt have given us enough time to get through Laos and into Malaysia, where I want to do a dive course.  So we are heading up to Chaing Rai, then down to Bangkok, then overland into Malaysia, where we will see a few places and make our way to ther Perinthian Islands. Two islands that are quiet and idyllic and meant to be an amazing place to learn to dive. So thats the plan so far.

Peace x

When we left you last we were leaving the dreary, raininess of Bangkok for the cool, mountainous scenery of the North!  We were the first ones on the bus to Chiang Mai, and we got on literally, just as the heavens opened, and we sat there dry and smug as the bus filled up with an assortment of drowned rats!  The journey wasn’t bad as sleeper buses go… we watched a brilliantly awful film called ‘The Condemned’, starring Vinnie Jones and the wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin!  We could tell it would be good purely by the calibre of the actors!  It was basically an American version of Battle Royale, with the tagline ‘Nine people die… You get to watch!’  But it whiled away a couple of hours on an otherwise uneventful bus journey.

We arrived in Chiang Main at stupid o’clock in the morning, about 6am, and as usual the bus company took us to a hotel of their choice and spent half an hour trying to get us to stay at their place and sell us their treks, but we did get a free cup of tea, so swings and roundabouts as James would say!  When the guy had finished his spiel and I’d finished my tea, we headed off to a place called Julie’s which had been recommended to us by some girls we met in Hampi in India.  With two girls in tow who had no idea where they were going and wanted someone to follow, we found the famous Julie’s and, sod’s law, there was a big sign outside saying ‘WE HAVE NO ROOMS’. Great!  The two girls we were with (whose names I don’t think I even asked) decided to go and look for somewhere else, but we weren’t to be put off so easily.  We sat in the bar area waiting for reception to open at 8am, but it seemed the guests at Julie’s were early risers, so James spent the next half an hour asking everyone who came downstairs ‘Are you leaving today?’  All the responses were ‘No!’  The next question was inevitably ‘Are you sure you can’t be persuaded?’ which was also met with a resounding ‘No!’  How to win friends and influence people…. I think not!
Eventually, the boss lady turned up and told us she thought there might be rooms but we’d have to wait a while, so we ordered breakfast and she soon returned to tell us there was indeed a double room available but we’d have to wait for them to clean it.  Well, that was fine by us, we ate our breakfast and I soon began to nod off at the table, not having gotten too much sleep last night.  I think the boss lady thought I was making the place look untidy, so she led us up the rooftop terrace to have a doze in the hammocks until the room was ready.  We woke up about 12noon to see the boss lady peeking her head round the door… it turns out she’d come to tell us the room was ready at about 10.30 but we’d been dead to the world and she couldn’t wake us!  So we went downstairs to see the room, and it was beautiful, we had our own bathroom with hot water, and unlike most of the budget places we stay someone had actually put some thought into the decoration; we had purple sheets and walls painted in bright colours and there were even paintings in frames!  Gorgeous!

We spent the day wandering round town… we walked the whole way round the old city walls (me managing to break yet another pair of flip flops along the way) and ended  up in the Queen Vic for a cup of tea and a game of pool.  It was quite nostalgic for me actually, as this was where James first taught me to play pool over a year ago now….
Anyway we headed back to Julie’s for dinner and got chatting to a Northern Irish guy called Paul, who we’d tried to evict from his room earlier on that morning.  He didn’t seem to bear too much of a grudge though and we ended up going to the night market with him.  We wandered round but didn’t buy anything, not even shoes… oops!
So we spent a pleasant few days in Chiang Mai, Paul has now become our constant companion…  and we decided it was time we did something cultural instead of just playing pool, so we made a trip up to a Wat in the mountains called Wat Phra That Doi Suthep.  It was absolutely beautiful, with gorgeous views out over the city and so much exotic plant life it felt like you were in some sort of secret garden.  It would have been an idyllic, tranquil get away, really the sort of place spiritual people go to ‘find themselves’ if it weren’t for the swarms of chattering tourists all clicking away at their cameras and sticking their enormous zoom lenses under your nose!  But still it couldn’t quite take away from the charm of the place.  This place was also a big deal for James, as he’d been banging of for ages about this Wat he’d visited when he was on holiday in Thailand with the family and there was this story that one of the ancient Kings had a beloved elephant and when it got to old age the King released it into the wild and where the beast dropped down dead, he built a Wat in honour of his favourite pet!  James had told this story to several people, including locals, but he was met with blank faces every time… but it turns out this was the place!  The story differed a little; apparently the elephant was sent off with a sacred Buddhist relic and where the elephant died was the place the relic should remain, so they built a Wat to house it. 
On Sunday James and I made a trip to the huge Sunday market which seemed to stretch on forever but we braved the crowds and came away rewarded.  James got two more pairs of the flip flops he loves and I got the awesomest pair of batman converse and instead of flips flops (which I only seem to destroy) I got JELLY SHOES!!!! It makes me feel like I’m 5 again! 

We spent our evenings chatting and playing yet more games of pool with Paul, and English guy we met called David, he was maybe in the forties and had been in Chiang Mai for 25 days! Admittedly he’d been ill for 10 of those but still… and also a Dutch girl called Naartje who was doing some sort of foot massage therapy course thing.
We soon decided we’d spent long enough doing very little in Chiang Mai and booked a bus to Pai for Monday; it turned out so had Paul and Naartje! David was staying in Chaing Mai to do his ‘Teaching English as a Foreign Language’ (TEFL) course.  So we were up early on Monday morning (Well, 9am) in readiness for our bus; Naartje was on an earlier bus but we ended up on the same one as Paul.  It was a four hour journey up into the mountains on the twistiest, turniest, windiest roads I’ve ever seen!  But it was well worth the sore arse… Pai is ace.  A tiny little town on a river which, although bus loads of travellers turn up every day, doesn’t seem overrun.  We (including Paul… he sort of makes up the ‘we’ now) got ourselves little huts at a place called Mr. Jan’s, which was recommended to us by Naartje who already had friends in Pai.  The huts are nothing special, but they’re set in the most beautiful herb garden, I can’t describe the loveliness of the different perfumes that come from the plants as you wander round and the bright colours of the hoards of butterflies that flutter about the place.  A real gem.
So, we’re happily settled in Pai now; there’s not much to do here unless you rent motorbikes, then you can head off into the hills and find the various waterfalls and hot springs that surround the place, but we haven’t quite got round to doing that yet.  Instead we’ve been discovering Pai’s plentiful nightlife; surprisingly, it has a wicked live music scene. Myself, James, Paul and Richard (an English guy we met here) went to a bar on Monday night where a band was playing… One guy on drums, a guy on bass, another on bongos, a guitarist and a violinist, playing tunes that sometimes had an Irish feel to them but sometimes sounded positively Middle Eastern. They were brilliant… Dad, you would have loved it!

The one downside to this place is the fact that rainy season has hit early, so we get a torrential downpour every afternoon, or, like today, hours of miserable drizzle.  But that can’t dampen our spirits… we’re in good company, surrounded by epic scenery… what more could we want?

We’ve been umming and aahing about where we’re heading while we’re over here, and the plan at the moment is to pop over into Laos, as James would like to do The Gibbon Experience again (and we have to do a visa run anyway).  I’m not that bothered about going gibboning again, so we’re thinking I might stay in Chiang Rai (where we’re headed next at some point) and do some sort of course, maybe cooking, maybe jewellery making and meet James in Laos when he’s finished swinging round the jungle!  Then hit some spots in Laos before going down to the Thai Islands for some beach time!  That’s the rough plan at the moment (it also seems to be Paul’s so you might be hearing a lot more about him) but we’ll keep you posted on what we decide.

In response to Tom’s comment on the last entry, all Indian people eat only with their right hand… they think eating with the left is uncouth and dirty.  This is because of their toilet habits; Indian people don’t use toilet paper, instead they have a bucket of water beside the toilet and they use their left hand to wash their bum!  So when they see us using our left hand to eat, they think we’re disgusting, but I just want to make them all understand that we don’t use our hands to clean ourselves and we wash our hands after going to the toilet anyway!  But it’s just another one of those cultural differences you have to get used to… like in Thailand it’s very offensive to show the soles of your feet to people, or point at anything with your feet, especially in temples as the feet are considered the lowest and dirtiest part of the body.

So, I think we’ll be in Pai for a few days yet but we’ll keep you posted on all our plans.

Much Love
xxxxxxxx