Bangkok - the final chapter -

Having made the overnight train journey down to Bangkok we revisited the Khao San road area for a 3rd time on our trip. After having to stay a night in our last choice guest house we managed to get in at our favourite... New Siam II. This is a great place to stay and nearly always full. It was a good location as it wasn't right in the main backpacker area but just on the edge so you weren't out of things.

Our feelings were mixed as we entered Bangkok for the final time - from Vanessa's excitement at the possibility of a shopping extravaganza to the low and realisation of our last week of close to 5 months travelling and to the anticipation of finally being able to settle and start to build a new life in / back in Oz. We didn't have extensive plans for our final week but did want to try and see some of the sites that we didn't have time for in our previous visits as well as some of the nightlife that had been recommended by others we'd met on our travels. To begin with we took a trip on the river. The river was surprisingly choppy but our guide soon took us along the backwaters of the city and we uncovered the quieter Bangkok life of inhabitants living on or next to the water. It was by no means spectacular but still nice to see the variety of houses and the verandas that each seemed to have for guests or just sitting and relaxing.

Following this trip, the next day we visited the Grand Palace. Here we had to hire short sleeve shirts and long trousers out of respect for the Buddhist religion. We ended up looking like - along with everyone else - MC Hammer lookalikes! The palace itself was pretty impressive. Lots of decorative gold leaf, but also a fusion of styles introduced by the various Kings of Thailand over the years. We saw 3 stupah's on the upper terrace dedicated to Cambodia (in the style of Angkor), Thailand and a gold stupah similar to those we had visited in Sri Lanka. Our guide was very informative, but also very strict which we found quite funny but unfortunately he didn't really reciprocate our good humour. The paintings / murals around the walls of the palace were also really interesting to see and were similar to those we'd seen in Angkor and even in India. This wasn't surprising however, due to the link with Buddhism in India and throughout SE Asia. The more modern parts of the Palace were strange with obvious influences from France and England. Indeed one of the building's was designed by a British architect and was very English but with a thai roof...in fact apart from that it looked remarkedly similar to Kings Cross station!

Our night time activities centred around the area around Chatuchak night markets. The markets themselves were great with everything on offer, including all the latest films at the cinema on dodgy Thai DVD. We also bought our first proper art piece here. A nice bright and vibrant oil painting. It was actually the first one we both looked at and immediately both liked. Once you'd had enough of shopping the markets also played host to great food and entertainment with lots of food and beer stalls surrounding tables and at one end a live band with dancing girls overlooked by a huge screen showing Premiership football, Perfect! The Thais successfully catered to both of us...

Our second night around Chatuchak took us to the nearby Thai boxing (Muay Thai) stadium - Lumpini stadium. The tickets cost a mint (ok for ringside seats) but we had to see it. We weren't disappointed and saw 6 matches in the 3 hours we were there. The Thai people were very passionate and the boxers very skilled but also very light. The heaviest we saw were around 115 lbs. Before each match the boxers would participate in a preparation ritual which involved praying / bowing in each corner of the ring and then performing a kind of dance around each other in the centre. The fighting was full on and a few times we saw blood being spilt. We didn't see any knockouts or towels thrown in though and the fights were decided by the number and quality of direct hits connecting with the opponent using fist, elbow, thigh or foot. The atmosphere was electric as the 4th / 5th rounds came on and the Thai's started betting frantically.

For our final 3 nights we decided to treat ourselves for the final time by checking into a proper hotel so we booked the Asia Hotel which was handily located next to a Sky Train station. Still, didn't really matter as Taxi's were so cheap and easy to come by that we used them to get around usually. We had a big comfortable room with cable TV and comparatively more grandeur than usual.

We treated ourselves by visiting two of the highest points in Bangkok for a drink and dinner. Sirocco is probably the most amazing bar we've both been to. On the 64th floor of the State Tower we were drinking at an open air bar that had spectacular views across Bangkok's night life. Drinks were pricey but the experience was worth it. The bar changed different fluorescent colours and a jazz band played on a platform to the side of it. From there we made our way to the Baiyoke Sky tower where we had an all you can eat buffet meal. Unfortunately, this was far from the exclusiveness we had experienced at Sirocco and the views weren't quite as good, but still we'd lived it up pretty well.

The shopping around our hotel - the Siam area was also pretty amazing. The shopping centres were numerous, from the electronics complex of Pantip Plaza to the bargain MBK Centre and the Siam Square and Siam Discovery centre. All of these were at least 6 storey's high and a good few hundred metres wide. We watched Memoirs of a Geisha in comfy sofas in the MBK cinema (6.5/10 Vanessa, 3/10 Andy) and picked up plenty of pairs of the cheapest Diesel and Replay jeans as well as t-shirts and more DVD's. However, all of these places were eclipsed by the amazing Siam Paragon shopping centre with immaculate designer shops and the best quality food court we'd seen. We picked up a few bargains in the sale...

The final day came upon us and we were now slightly over budget after all the shopping....even though I'd decided against a new PS2, footy boots, video iPod and Armani jacket. Amazingly, we managed to cram all our purchases into our existing luggage (plus one extra bag we had to buy) and were just inside the Emirates limit. We headed to the airport with our final mad taxi driver...who had verbal diarrhoea and kept talking and laughing the whole way. A fitting final journey after many other similar mad journeys over the past 5 months.

We had an amazing 5 months. There are plenty of happy and fantastic memories to take with us to our new life in Australia as well as some invaluable life lessons and appreciation for everything that we have. We're fortunately able to have just peeked into some of the poverty that exists in the places that we've visited rather than actually have to live it day to day. But to see how happy people were with so little and how kids can make a game out of a plastic bag and rolled up paper it really does raise the question of do we really need everything that we have? Of course we're already talking of flats looking over the harbour and plasma screen TV's but hopefully we won't forget and will try and help out those we've met on our travels. We're now looking forward to the next phase - for Vanessa finally returning home and for Andy starting a new career and new life in a country with more sport on TV than anywhere else he's been! ;-) Wish us luck...
Andy Wright and Vanessa Toutounji
Andy Wright and Vanessa Toutounji
Andy Wright and Vanessa Toutounji
Andy Wright and Vanessa Toutounji

Up to Northern Thailand and Chiang Mai -

So...as we chose neither of the boat options and couldn't get a flight we embarked on a journey taking a number of buses upto Chiang Mai. The journey wasn't too bad and as we were transferred from a bus station in Nong Kwai to another bus station to take us to Chiang Mai we met our bonkers tuk tuk driver! Now having travelled for many months by now I did have a bit of a beard and moustache which this guy thought was hilarious. He kept looking at me in his mirror and pointing and sticking his thumbs up. He also tried to race a few other tuk tuks and generally just had us in stitches for the 15 minutes we were with him. So...we 'rewarded' him by giving him my Everton shirt (Ok, maybe not a reward I'm sure some of you will say!). He was chuffed and showed all the women around the bus station his new shirt...

We arrived in Chiang Mai safely and after having done extensive research before leaving Laos headed for a guesthouse we'd heard great things about...especially the owner who seemed to be the font of knowledge for all things Chiang Mai. The Blue House was a bargain and had cable TV. We were happy and the owner Jimmy promptly sorted us out with a cooking course at an organic farm and an overnight trekking trip. He also gave us the local info and a map to get us started...we began by visiting the Sunday markets.

These markets just can't be missed if you're in Chiang Mai. They had absolutely everything including my favourite Pearl Milk Tea which I hadn't had since Bangkok. We devoured spring rolls, chicken and pork skewers, ice cream, pad thai and much more as we wandered the streets looking at stalls and buying bits and pieces of local handicrafts. That lunchtime we also had the best fish ever...with a salt crust on barbecued on a skewer on the street...it was fantastic! We ate a lot and the next day proceeded to eat even more!

This time though we put much more effort into what it was we were eating...our Organic Cooking course was a great experience. There were cooking classes advertised all over Chiang Mai but we definitely reckon this one was the best. We were taken out to the organic farm (about 17km outside of Chiang Mai) where we were shown around the farm and educated on all the different herbs and vegetables that they grew in the gardens. We used all the fresh ingredients as we cooked.... - Thai Chicken Green Curry, Chicken with Cashew Nuts, Pad Thai and Mango with Sticky Rice. All the food was amazing (if we do say so ourselves!) and we were stuffed by the end of the day. The cook who taught us was very friendly and funny as she teased a few of the slightly dumber and older American women who kept mistaking soy sauce and fish sauce and putting the wrong amounts of everything into their dishes.

The day after cooking we went trekking! We packed up our stuff and left the bulk of it with Jimmy (at our guest house) and set off in a Songtaew (kind of like a truck taxi) heading up into the hills to visit the hill tribes - the Karen people. First stop was a waterfall...not quite as impressive as Luang Prabang but not bad nonetheless. It didn't have the pools surrounding it but I got in for a photo anyway. The force of the water was immense and it was bloody freezing as well! We carried on up to some hot springs where the water boiled and steam was everywhere...it was kind of like when we visited the Volcanic region in Japan but must have been even hotter given the average temperature in Thailand. Our trek started in earnest here as we started walking up..and up..and up..and up! The teva's we'd bought in Bangkok were being put to good use, but inevitably Vanessa 'I've got a blister' Toutounji soon needed to stop to apply cream and socks...yep, Sandals and Socks! That night we arrived at the village where instead of trying to take a shower in the makeshift bathroom I ran down to the river and jumped in with a bottle of Johnson's baby shampoo. It was the most refreshing shower I've ever had... The Karen people didn't speak any English of course but were very friendly..considering they've always got travellers coming through their village. Our guide Bobby cooked us a great Green Curry and then we sat down around the camp fire drinking beer and singing songs with the rest of our group...Divyah, Cornelius, Monica and two English girls who at 19 made us feel very old. That night...it was freezing! We slept on a mat on the floor and despite the sleeping bag and numerous blankets we were given it was still difficult to sleep. For me, more because of the hard floor. So when 7am came around we were all glad to get up, have brekkie and get on with our trek down to the elephant camp.

We jumped on the back of an elephant and casually rode along the river for about 2 hours on the back of our grey, leathery transportation. It wasn't that comfortable but the scenery was beautiful. Although the seat was hard for us, the mahouts had no problem sitting on the elephant's head and guiding us along. In fact we passed another mahout coming back along the river...asleep on the back!

We arrived at another village down river where locals had built us a bamboo raft. We had to float down the river and negotiate rapids with long bamboo poles. Unfortunately, after hitting a number of rocks the twinings on the raft started to come loose and at the back of the raft I suddenly started to notice gaps appearing between the bamboo. As we hit one rapid and I lost my balance my foot and 'chicken' leg went straight through and left me with a nice gash and bruise for the next week or so. Still, we had a really quality time on our trek and we all were thoroughly exhausted by the time we arrived back in Chiang Mai.

Now here is when the great Jimmy and Blue House lost all our faith and goodwill. They promised to keep us a room - but now we'd spent all our money with them on trips - they transferred us to another guest house because they were 'full'. We were too tired to argue and when we got to the new guest house sat down and instantly started getting bitten by bugs in the bed. Not happy we stormed out and found somewhere else...This seems to be the problem when travelling...if you're not spending they don't like you...if you've spent, they've liked you and left you - hunting for more like you! Ahh well!

After the trek we decided to chill out for a few days and headed up to a place called Chiang Dao. Here we relaxed, read books, chilled out and ate fantastic food. We stayed at Chiang Dao Nest 2. The setting was idyllic...beneath a mountain and the thai food was scrumptious. Unfortunately, the lady running it was a bit grumpy and not very friendly at all. So, one night we decided to visit another place up the road - that we'd hoped to stay in the first place. We met Malee who was a fantastic host and extremely friendly. One night we took some new friends (Jeff and Becca) over to Malee's where she cooked us a fantastic BBQ and we had a great night. Jeff and Becca are on a year tour taking in almost 40 countries. An amazing feat if you manage it guys.,...keep us posted!!

Chiang Dao caves were a must see and we were escorted around by an old man with a gas burner who pointed out all the little crevices and names of the different rocks - usually arrived at based on what they looked like. The cave was much bigger than we expected (although after, Vanessa realised she had been there before!).

With one week to go...we set off for Bangkok on the overnight train and left Chiang Mai having had some really good days and an overall mixed experience. Compared to the rest of South East Asia it felt as if Thailand is a little too geared up for tourists...

Luang Prabang - the old capital of Laos -

Luang Prabang really was the jewel in the Laos crown. Peaceful (despite the thousands of tourists that come year upon year) and relaxing and home to some 500 monks. The town is scattered with Buddhist temples and lies along the Mekong river...in it's centre lies Mount Phoussi. The 6 hour minibus journey had it's high points and low points along the picturesque hills and valleys (with Vanessa asleep on one shoulder and a big German asleep on the other) and Luang Prabang was a welcome destination.

The monks really were the focal point here. Their bright orange robes contrasting amazingly against the white and grey backdrops of temple walls and houses. The main event was the daily giving of alms to the monks. Every morning, locals would line the pavements, kneeling with gifts of rice, flowers and sweets in their hands as a spectacular line of 500 monks would file past to except their gifts. As you can imagine this was a really amazing site and hence the camera went into overtime. However, we did try to remain respectful to the ceremony as the many posters around Luang Prabang had requested. We remained across the street and watched from afar...unfortunately, bus loads of European and Japanese tourists weren't always so discrete. Many of the monks were young and of high school age. Every buddhist in Laos ends up doing at least a year as a monk and many of them choose to combine this with high school and their studies. So as we walked around the temples the monks would come up and chat to us to practice their English.

One day we took a trip out to some waterfalls at the end of a very long and dusty dirt track road. Fortunately, we were in a mini bus but we passed plenty of people who chose to take a tuk tuk and arrived covered in dirt and pretty dishevelled (worse for them it was the same price!!). The waterfalls were fantastic. I (Andy) dived in and swam around in the beautiful blue-green water. The temperature wasn't so beautiful...but in the end it was so cold that you couldn't feel it so I coped ok! It was a great place and a great site to see...proving that Luang Prabang wasn't just temples and monks.

Vanessa's favourite part of Luang Prabang? - The Night Markets. To be fair they were very good. At 5pm each night locals and Laotians from surrounding villages would descend on the main street with baskets and boxes of handicrafts, textiles and beerlao t-shirts and lay out their goods on mats. The street was nicely lit up with individual lamps next to each street vendor. Here, we bought a few presents for friends in Oz and Vanessa invested in more scarves and fisherman's pants. Also here we found the cheapest food we'd had so far in Asia. Fit as much raw food on your plate as can and a woman cooks it for you there and then on the street in a big wok...all for about half a US dollar!

Other great things in Luang Prabang? A massage and steam room at the red cross massage...and chocolate croissants at a cafe called Joma's. Not so good? the visit to Pak Ou caves really isn't worth the 2 hour boat trip upstream where we nearly went overboard as our dodgy driver hit a rock....

Having travelled up ahead of them...we met up again with George and Tanya. One night with a few other friends (including Martin and Catherine - due in Sydney in March!) we went out to a place the other side of Mt Phoussi called LaoLao Barbeque. We had an awesome night with ten of us cooking our own food around a bbq dome with a soup troth around the side. We had a good laugh recounting tales of our travels and debating the best way to get to Chiang Mai. Was it to be the dreaded speed boat? the slow and uncomfortable slow boat or dodgy Laos airlines?

Well, unfortunately, Laos airlines was all booked up and we'd heard some horror stories of people being killed on the fast speed boat (as well as having experienced first hand seeing tourists pass us on a boat trip in a speed boat with crash helmets and virtually no room for any luggage), cramped and getting ripped off on the slow boat. Some interesting stories were recalled and harrowing details of people falling off and having to be picked up later were also found on the Internet.
So...eventually we decided to end our Laos experience with a flight back to Vientiane and a bus trip from there across the Friendship bridge and then upto Chiang Mai.

Laos was a fantastic country, not taken over by the tourist fever and the money grabbing mentality we'd seen in other areas of Asia. Luang Prabang was idyllic and Vang Vieng provided one of the best days of our trip so far.

Laos - Vientiane & Vang Vieng -

We left Cambodia on 15th Jan and flew into the Laos capital city, Vientiane. To be honest, its more of a large town than a small city. There's not a lot here apart from a replica Arc de Triomphe (made from concrete that the Americans gave the Lao's to build an airport runway) , and a golden stupah. Weirdly, there's also a top notch hair salon that Vanessa is in treating herself to permanently straightened hair as I write! Apparently (so she tells me) its a real bargain at $40 and would have set her back at least 300 pounds in London.

We stayed in a great cheap guest house called Phone Paseuth with the luxury of cable TV and a hot shower - ok a luxury we've been used to for a while now - which was close to the central water fountain. Here, there were some excellent restaurants offering 3 course French set menus for around $6. Apart from this and a good Scandinavian bakery Vientiane didn't have a great deal more to offer so we booked ourself a trip to Vang Vieng - on the recommendation of loads of other travellers...

We then took a 4 hour bus ride and spent a few days in and around Vang Vieng. It’s like a mini Kho San Road - lots of backpackers, bars showing western movies and re-runs of ‘Friends’. As well as tubing, Vang Vieng is famous for its ‘happy shakes’ and ‘happy pizzas’ or there’s the ‘Ecstatic shake’ if you feeling like getting, well, ecstatic I suppose. Our happy shake though was distinctly average and left us feeling, well, pretty much like we did before drinking it.

We stayed in a little bungalow next to the river and mountains. There was also a nice little balcony that we chilled out on as the sun went down. We came here with Tanya and George, a Canadian couple that we've been hanging out with for the last couple of days who've been a really good laugh. Amazingly have been with each other for 16 years and are travelling for 8 months around SE Asia.



We all went on a kayaking, trekking and tubing trip through caves, villages and down the river. We also got to do some rope swinging and cliff jumping over and into the river off these giant man-made swings. All along the river in Vang Vieng you can hear the intermittent cries of "BeerLao! BeerLao" as locals reach with long bamboo poles to pull you into their 'riverside bar' and to buy a Beer Lao. Yes, officially the best beer in Asia! It would have to be in our top 5 days away so far. The landscape was incredible, and this town instantly puts you in a chilled out kinda mood.

We did a another day on the river, this time tubing down the whole way which was cool; basically you sit in a giant inner tube and float down the river in the sun for four or five hours. The scenery is spectacular, limestone cliffs rising out of rice paddy fields. Again we went on the rope swings and zip lines...chilled out with a few beers and leisurely made our way down the 3.5km stretch of river. Travelling can't get much better than this.

Laos was a real breathe of fresh air from the rest of Asia - the people were some of the friendliest we've ever seen, and unlike Thailand and Cambodia, weren't doing a real hard sell on you. Although its a pretty poor country, the Laotians don't seem to beg a lot either. Next it was to the old capital of Laos and a 6 hour minibus ride to Luang Prabang.

The spectacular Angkor Wat -

A few days later we got on another bus up north to Siem Reap, the home of the world's most amazing ruins, the ancient Angkor Kingdom. We managed to get our lazy arses out of bed (for only the second time in 3 and a half months) at 5 am to watch the sunrise behind the main Angkor Wat Temple.

The view was stunning. The temple rises out of the pitch black of night into the early morning light like something out of Indiana Jones. Of course your sitting their watching the sunrise with about 300 other gaping travellers, so maybe Indiana may have been feeling a little claustrophobic at this point. But - even allowing for the busloads of Japanese tourists- Angkor has to be the most amazing thing we've seen on our trip. I would have to say that it even beats the Egyptian Pyramids and the Taj Mahal.

We also saw the Bayon Temple here which has 208 massive stone faces carved into its walls. Siem Reap had the same peaceful feel to it that Phnom Penh did...which some people might find strange for it to be described like that when the square around the market was being completely dug up and there are of course plenty of tourists, but again it was the indescribable feel of the place that made it hard to leave.

Ta Prohm was another fascinating, almost unbelievable sight. The age of the ruins and the abandonment of them from about the 13th Century onwards has led to them being engulfed by jungle until the French started to uncover them again. Here at Ta Prohm the roots of trees had completely grown over the top of some of the walls. If you want to see more pics of these you're probably better off watching Tomb Raider which was filmed here.

New Year's in Cambodia -

We took a mini bus over the Thai/Cambodian border, overpaid for visa's to some corrupt Cambodian officials, sat in a small bar listening to 60+year old guys bragging about their early 20's Thai girlfriends (errgghh!) before a final 4 hour roof-top boat ride along the Cambodian coast to reach the beach side town of Sihanoukville.

We spent New Years on the beach knocking back $1 pina coladas at a cool little beach shack bar, before having a bit of a dance at another shack a bit further along the beach. My first New Year (Andy) in the heat..and it was good! Although, still can't beat a house party and Inferno's in London! ;-)

After the hospital disaster at Xmas the sun n sand was exactly what we needed, so 4 nights turned into 2 weeks before we could manage to tear ourselves away from the beach. All over the beaches were kids selling bracelets, braids or collecting plastic bottles and cans. It was tough to see but at the same time they were really friendly and seemed happy enough, but they did have to work hard. We also visited a cafe here that helped raise money for those effected by the poverty in the area...it seemed that there were projects to help in place but I guess not nearly enough. So we bought a few things off the kids and tried to eat at the cafe as often as possible.

We stayed in a couple of places in Sihanoukville including a 5 star resort for 5 nights. Yep, we pushed the boat out and it was well worth it as the private white sand beach was so beautiful and peaceful. Of course it's made it hard to go back to being a skummy backpacker again, but oh well.

From Sihanoukville we took a 4 hour bus trip up to the Cambodian capital city Phnom Penh. The most famous (or infamous) tourist sites are the Choeung Ek Killing Fields and Toul Sleng Prison. Choeung Ek is a series of exhumed mass graves, with a stupa at its center filled with the skulls of hundreds of men, women and children. Toul Sleng is the former high school the Khmer Rouge converted into a torture center where around 14,000 people were prepared for their deaths with electric shocks and other atrocities such as having their heads locked inside boxes of scorpions. The victims' photos line the walls, although the skull map of Cambodia has now been removed.

Both sites were pretty overwhelming and depressing, but important to see to understand the brutality of the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime's rule and understand why Cambodia is still struggling to come to terms with this past while the former leaders live out their old ages in peace and at large.

As a result the miltary still seems to be pretty corrupt which luckily for me (Andy) I was able to get to a shooting range where you could choose guns from a menu and test fire them against a target. I was just curious... Still 5 of my 7 with a czechoslovakian 9mm hit close to the centre of the target so I was pretty chuffed!

Despite the torrid past that they've had to endure, its been great to meet all of the Cambodians and to see that their lives now are better (a long way off perfect by all means) and that they have freedom, but unfortunately, very little money. In fact a school teacher or doctor is unlikely to earn over 20 US$ a month.

And for a capital city who's history is so rooted in misery, Phnom Penh is suprisingly characteristic. It still has alot of colonial charm left over from the Frenchies. We spent our evenings in the many riverside bars, great for watching the Mekong flow by, as well as whole families whizz past on just one motorcycle.

We also did a Cambodian cooking class here which was fantastic. First of all we were taken round the Phnom Penh food markets where we saw amazing colours of limes, chillis, watermelons as well as lots of fish, dried, smoked, live, almost alive and some that could have been dead for quite a while! We arrived at a dutchman's house (Fritz) where we each had our own cooking station. We kicked off with papaya salad and then made great 'sausages' - with chicken and pork wrapped in a banana flower and then fried in batter. They were delicious!

For mains we made Fish Amok a traditional cambodian dish which involved steaming sliced fish in a red curry sauce inside a banana leaf pinned together with cocktail sticks. The lady that took the course had had a really tough life and almost died during the Pol Pot regime but had still managed to raise 4 of her 5 children and get them through school and now into Uni - sadly, she had to give up her last son for adoption to a french couple as he had a bad heart condition. She was so friendly and kind to us and is probably the nicest person we've met on our trip.

Finally, like each of the main capital city's we've visited so far...the Royal Palace of Phnom Penh was a spectacular building and complex. From here we made the trip upto Siem Reap and the next stunning site..to rival the Taj Mahal...Angkor Wat!

Thailand for Xmas?? -

After the baltic conditions in Japan, Bankok's climate was bliss. We decided to settle here for a couple of days before deciding on where to head for Xmas. We knew we wanted it hot, relaxing and in a bit of comfort as well. We decided on a small island called Koh Chang off the south east coast of Thailand and booked a resort (and SPA) called VJ hotel and health spa.

However, before we left we visited a couple of Bangkok markets to stock up on seaside clothes for the trip. The markets were great fun and very big. They had literally anything you could need from bootleg DVD's and CD's to rip off designer tshirts, jeans and all the food you can dream of. Ok, some of the food might have been a bit dodgy but we found a place on the street which was kinda like a restaurant and decided to risk it and the food was very good indeed (minced pork, tofu and noodle soup). We visited two markets, one at night and one during the daytime...but still buying real Teva sandals from the posh shopping centre! Well, you get what you pay for ;-)

Well, after watching Everton drop to a miserable 4-0 defeat against Bolton in a bar near Kao San Road my despair forced us into a decision and a change of scenery and it was then we booked our trip to Koh Chang. The ride down on the bus was good and very cheap and we then caught a ferry from Trat on the mainland to the island itself. When we arrived at VJ Hotel and health spa we were pretty happy with the look of the hotel, the new clean rooms, the cable TV, the pool and the beach...but it was strangely a little empty. Anyway, turns out the Spa hadn't finished being built yet and there wasn't really anything going on this far down the island. There was however, a really nice small beach bar a 5 min walk along the bach where we enjoyed two sunsets and a couple of beers and cocktails. But, after 2 nights we decided enough was enough and that we needed to be closer to the action.

So we moved down to a beach hut place right on White Sands Beach looking out onto the ocean. Unfortunately, this was where our trip started to take a turn for the worse. Firstly, it started to rain (turns out all of south thailand and the islands of Ko Samui and Phuket were getting constantly drenched and we'd been lucky until now) and then the Internet access (the usual during rain activity) ceased to the entire island. So, we hung around in our room playing scrabble and reading books. On the 22nd December we ate Tom Yam soup and then later took a pizza back to our room (I can hear you saying thanks for the details - but I'll explain why). The Pizza was a bit slimy.....but that night resulted us in literally taking turns to use the bathroom as a violent attack of Vomitting and Dhiarrhoea hit us both. By morning we were still ill and so I asked the hotel to take us to the Docs. Of course we ended up being taken to the very posh, 5 star, private clinic on the island where our comprehensive travel insurance policy was like booking into the Ritz with a Platinum or Black Amex card. The doctor diagnosed us with food poisoning and with a fever and some poor blood test results I was stuck on a drip and we were both taken over by ambulance to the main hospital on the mainland diagnosed with an infection from food poisoning. We spent the next 2 nights here well cared for and with a TV but only with 2 English channels - Nickelodeon and Real Madrid TV! Luckily the insurance policy came good and they agreed to pay the bill - a whacking 1750 US$ definitely our most expensive stay yet!

We got out on the afternoon of Xmas day and still feeling pretty fragile (and runny - sorry for the detail) booked into a hotel in Trat for a couple of nights. Trat was pretty uneventful apart from a nice and very cheap restaurant that was recommended to us where we ended up eating all our meals (it was recommended by the hospital staff so we were ok to trust it).

So, that was our Xmas pretty much ruined and we decided to make up for it with a good new year and head off to Sihanoukville and the best beach in Cambodia!