Singapore... A holding bay before NZ

To get our cheap cheap flight to Singapore we had to stay a night in Had Yai- a place we had hear mixed, if not mostly negative things about. We got to our hotel late, we paid a little extra to make sure it was OK so so far so good. Our search for dinner resulted in sitting in a Thai restaurant with no English menus and where we soon realised we were expected to cook all the food ourselves at the table. One waitress spoke English and offered us some fried rice, so whilst everyone around us chomped on hearty meat dishes, the only 2 westerners in the place sat quietly and ate rice. We concluded that Had Yai was a good way to experience a genuine thai working town, but not much else.

The next day we headed to the airport. By this time I realised that what I thought was an odd collection of mosquito bites on my hands turned out to be a reaction to something and throughout Singapore I had to put up with very hot balloon-esque hands- not the most practical! Singapore itself was similar to KL in that the fancy city train lulls you in to a false sense of western luxury. When you actually arrive at your accommodation that you have paid 30GBP a night for- it is a hole. Our hole was just outside little india, so instead of feeling like we were in Singapore, we felt as if we were in Bangladesh or similar. For me it was a little strange as at times the streets were full of men, not a woman in sight. We also found that unless you threw a wad of cash as restaurants or hotels, it was mostly impossible to get a decent meal or place to stay and it was for these reasons and the absence of fresh fruit that were were impatient to leave.

twiddly orchids

To make our stay more enjoyable we visited the botanic & orchid gardens and zoo. These activities were a good distraction apart from the fact that my first sight of an Orangutan was whilst it was performing in a zoo show (why these still go ahead I cannot comprehend). On our final day we decided to go to the cinema to kill time before our flight at 8pm. We chose to see "The Impossible", a film about the boxing day Tsunami that was set in Khao Lak- this was very surreal having just been there. This film was extremely well done and an eye opener that does in no way compare to seeing news stories on the TV at the time.Well worth a watch.

Finally, at the half way point of our journey, the time had come to fly to our next country that we were both very excited about: NEW ZEALAND!!!

Thailand: Krabi

If we thought Khao Lak was expensive then we were in for a shock when we got to Ao Nang in the Krabi province. It was yet another evening of walking up and down the main high street in search of a cheap room (a common activity in Thailand it would seem). This was probably the most touristy place we visited and the best we could come up with was an 800baht room, which wasn't that great and double what we were used to paying. After a bit of faffing the next day we decided to relocate to Krabi and commute to the beaches at Railay. Our room in Krabi was soo much nicer and came with extremely friendly hosts, a plasma TV in the main communal area with 3 boxes of DVDs to choose from. Oh and we must not forget- gravy and chips on the menu. Sometimes this is just what you need when traveling.




The beaches at Railay were typically Thai and 'paradisey'. However having been very spoilt the week before on a beach in the Similan Islands without any foot prints on it, we were quite content just to read a bit and Nick found a slack line or two. Oh yeah, forgot to mention on the way to the beach I almost stood on a tree snake.

Thailand: Khao Lak & a boat in the Similan Islands

Everything went very quickly from arriving in Khao lak for our PADI course to departing a week later. We had one afternoon to chill out after getting back from Khao Sok and then training started the next day. We had one day of theory in the dive center before our 3hr pool session the next morning. After this we were off on the boat and heading out to sea!

The first dive in open water was VERY surreal. Your mostly concentrating on your equipment, but every now and then it will feel like second nature and you will start looking around at all the fish. There were SO many here that it was impossible to keep a fish diary like we did for Koh Wai, instead we would recognise similar species in about 10 different variations to what we were used to.

Every day we did 3 or 4 dives, Nick did a few more than me as I had to give my ear a rest from equalizing. Most people on the boat had to sit one or two dives out as you are on the go from 6am to 10pm. The food was excellent, imagine getting out of the water with 2hrs to go before your next dive and you are greeted with cheese (real cheese), crackers and olives- amazing.

Just for the record: I was very cold

Enough said about food, back to marine life. We were treated to some amazing sights. On our 2nd or 3rd open water dive we were at a site called deep 6 where we had a steep incline which we were swimming along (reef to our left and open sea to our right), we saw many large fish including a school of trevellies and a baracuda that emerged from the blue. On our second day, as normal, all the fruit peelings and food bits were thrown off the back of the boat and loads of fish came to feed. However after 10mins we heard someone say "sea turtle" and sure enough a large female green sea turtle had come to forage on the fruit leftovers. It didn't take long for me and Nick, plus one other from the boat to decide that we were getting in the water food scraps or no food scraps. This was the best decision. As I was about to jump in our scuba instructor handed me a piece of watermelon husk and within 2 minutes I had a sea turtle munching on it in a very leisurely fashion whilst I was trying to contain my excitement. She was very curious and stayed for some time, not afriad to swim right underneath you or make you move out of the way!

We had plenty more dives to do after that at some amazing sites, my favorite of which was called 3trees. We saw another sea turtle here along with a sea snake, giant porcupine fish, nudibranch (google it) and a cool looking juvenille fish which I have forgotten the name of. On our last dive- a wreck dive we saw multiple sting rays, huge schools of fish you could hardly see through, loads of new nudibranches, lots of different puffer fish, a pipe fish that looked like a shoelace and a ghost pipe fish- a rare spot (the underwater sign for which is the same as looking like a gangster).

I think I have told most of the exciting bits although I could go one for a while yet! Needless to say we collapsed and slept a lot when we got back before heading off to our next stop: Krabi.

Thailand: Khao Sok

The first rain we had experienced in over a month began to fall as we entered Khao Lak- our stopover before Khao Sok. It was an odd, donning the Vietnamese ponchos after such a long time. Whilst searching for somewhere to stay the night we soon realised that we had greatly underestimated the price difference between the North & South of Thailand. In the end we walked for over half an hour along an unlit road to the next village to find a 300baht room. Luckily we just missed the torrential downpour that cut off all the electricity just as we were settling in for the night- our host was very efficient and supplied us with a candle for the evening!

The next day we got the public bus to Khao Sok National Park. Another (freshly built) traditional thai hut on stilts awaited us (one amongst six in our hosts garden). We didn't have to wait long for our first wildlife encounter as we were soon shown the huge gecko that lived in the eves and the monitor lizard that inhabited the tree hole next to the washing line. During our stay we saw nearly as much wildlife in the garden as we did in the park, including the tree frog that lived behind a picture frame and the giant toad that was a resident in the main house.

Pit Viper no.1

The park itself was almost too similar in places to the enclosures in the lost world, with broken concrete steps and rusty signposts. Nick soon became the first victim of leeches- a species we would get to know very well over the next few days! Amongst the bigger animals that we encountered there were giant 'bird eating' golden orb spiders, gliding lizards (one which flew past my face), long-tailed macaques & dusky langurs. One evening we decided to a night safari and were fortunate to get a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide (the same cant be said for a lot of them that we saw). Within the first 5 minutes he found 2 civet cats in the garden, and on the way back a slow loris climbing along an electricity cable. Inside the park he also found us these species along with a very spindly mouse deer, porcupine, black scorpion, many roosting birds- oh and another pit viper. I should probably mention at this point that we found one ourselves the day before and Nick risked getting a photo of it (I told him off after).

We still had one bird we really wanted to see- hornbill. After traveling to the giant lake at the centre of the park and kayaking around it we had no success. Then on the last day whilst looking at langurs we spotted one flying above the canopy. The best word to describe it would be: prehistoric. It completely matched the lost world atmosphere.

We were sad to leave our second hut but our next destination was the Similan Islands and scuba diving, so that made the process a whole lot easier.

Thailand: Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai was great. The city seemed to be totally traveller friendly whilst maintaining a non-touristy feeling. The main activity here, it has to be said, was shopping. With New Years Eve a couple of days away, not only was the Sunday walking market set up, but also another road and city square full of tribal crafts and everything Thai you could think of.



New Years Eve came around quickly and was unlike any we had experienced before. Everyone in the city (including us) let off a paper lantern from the moat around the inner city walls, so that by the time it got to 11pm the sky was filled with them going in one direction and it looked a bit like a fake milky way. Whilst lighting our lanterns and walking towards one of the city gates (where there was music etc) we had to negotiate lots of fireworks, mostly held by small children/parents. We decided that at midnight we would chose a safe-ish place to stand to avoid dodging any. This back fired (literally) as we happened to be standing right next to THE biggest set of "rockets" that were launched from the wall that we were standing in front of.

There was one activity in Chiang Mai that was a must for me, and after many frantic emails trying to book something in last minute during the holiday season we finally managed to arrange to see elephants. I'd like to say at this point that I had done a lot of research into ethical companies as many of the elephants are still treated with very little respect (e.g. mothers being separated from their babies to work, elephant football, elephant painting...). In the end I decided on the elephant nature park where rescue elephants are taken after being abused in the logging/tourism industry (and in some cases rescued from the wild as babies if the mother has died). No riding of elephants takes place here, but instead lots of feeding, washing and generally just walking with them in the massive expanse of land they have here. This was definitely a worthwhile experience, especially learning about training regimes that all domestic elephants go through in order for them to be ridden. In short they are forced in to a small cage at a very young age (2 years old approx), and are prodded with sticks with nails on the end until they submit. They can be in this cage 24hrs a day for up to a week at a time. There are many people that are campaigning against this treatment, but as it has been a tradition for many decades it is difficult to see an end to it any time soon. Having said this the elephants we met were amazing, and so friendly- which is surprising for what they've been through- apparently they remember the culprits of their mistreatment.

After a day with the elephants we decided to go an see a muay thai match- traditional thai boxing. It was great to watch, a lot more exciting than regular boxing so many more interesting moves. The 'special fight' was also interesting and basically involved 3 men being blind folded and set loose on each other in the ring whilst gangnam style was played in the background...  



Argh I've done a Nick and written loads. Chiang Mai went by very fast, especially as we were there 2 days later that planned. Next on the itinerary: South Thailand and diving..  

Journeying between Christmas and New Years..

So the aim was to get to Chiang Mai in two days.. it didn't quite go to plan. When we got to Bangkok we had missed the last bus to Ayutthaya by 15 minutes so had to start our journey again in the morning. Once we reached Ayutthaya (the easy part) we checked the train station to be sure there werent any last minute tickets available (our plan A), there were not. Plan B, was to get a minibus all the way up, but once we reached our hotel we were told that minibuses to Chiang Mai do not exist from Ayutthaya. Plan C, our fail safe was to get the government bus so we went to book this... Plan C was not to be either. There was a little bit of stress at this point but after a lot of running around and debate our last option was to get a VIP night bus the next evening (making us 2 days late for our hotel booking up North). Night buses were the thing we had both vitoed in Thailand, but it was VIP how bad could it be...

During the day that we had to kill in Ayutthaya we decided to look around the temples dotted about the city (from a similar age to those in Siem Reap). We only managed to get in to one temple (a good one) and I managed to get chased by a very angry dog whilst trying to find a temple. Luckily I was on my bike so managed to narrowly escape a snap at my heel, needless to say I did not continue my search for that particular structure and instead headed to 7-11 for my staple: cold chocolate milk.
That evening we were loaded on to our "VIP" bus. I know what one is supposed to look like as we were parked next to 2 in the petrol station but ours was definitely below par. Amongst the general tatter and sitting above some part of the engine, this was THE coldest journey I have ever been on. Air con was on overdrive and even all the street maps I had accumulated from various cities did not keep me warm when I wrapped myself up in them.

However. After a sleepless night we made it. We were briefly herded in to a different hotel and supplied with tea whilst a man tried to sell us many many tours and a room at said hotel. But finally we were free to explore our New Year's destination.   

Bat Update

A visitor to our friends beach hut (ours wasn't good enough!)  Photo courtesy of 'the lovely Americans'

The Adventures of Morris: Christmas

Unfortunately he couldn't come snorkelling

Morris found another travel buddy: Quetzal

Christmas Snorkeling

We loved this part of our island (even the tiny jellyfish that stung us). This is just a selection, there are many more in the fish diary we made during the evenings.

Thailand: Koh Wai & Christmas

Our home for Christmas

After sitting in an internet cafe in Kanchanburi we finally decided on a whim to make our way to the tiny island of Koh Wai for Christmas, which lies in the Gulf of Thailand south of its big brother Koh Chang.

And what a great decision this was.  We ended up staying in a small hut on stilts literally a stones throw from the crystal clear turquoise sea with our own private beach. Four days of eating, sleeping, snorkeling, sweeping and reading ensued (interspersed with the famous 'ball game'- a purchase from flowhouse).

Christmas dinner

During our stay we befriended couples from Ireland, California and Holland and with the small island atmosphere, it made for a great Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner. Instead of turkey we ate the latest catch of red snapper, giant prawns (featured below) and crab curry.

As a replacement for the Downton Abbey Christmas special, the Russians returned to provide a daily source of amusement from 11am-3pm (day trips from Koh Chang). There were many exotic poses against beach huts and palm leaves, and unfortunately for us the first (probably not last) appearance of the dreaded man thong...

One evening we adventured to the other side of the island for sunset, which we caught just in time. We were also treated to a colony of large bats foraging far above as we watched the last light disappear. With one meager head torch four of us slowly but surely made our way back through the darkness to our inhabited cove.

We were sad to leave our tropical paradise (its true, they do exist outside bbc wildlife documentaries and google images), and it was a very odd sensation to be back on a road and then even stranger to be back in the hustle and bustle of Bangkok.  We couldn't have asked for anything more on Christmas day.

We now had the task of reaching Chiang Mai for New Years in one of THE busiest holiday periods for Thailand. We had 2 days to do it in...