Visa Run To Burma From Phuket

Just about as soon as we arrived in Phuket, Duncan and I realised that our touristing licences were about to be revoked as a result of us nearly having used up all of our 30 day fun allocation. With this in mind we went and booked a fun day trip to Burma. This involved us getting a bus (AT 6 IN THE CHUFFING MORNING!!!!!!!!!!) to Rayong, nipping into immigration for a departure stamp, followed by a boat over to the Republic of Myanmar to get an arrival and departure stamp so we could go back to Rayong and graciously receive a further stamp to welcome us and our tourist dollars back with open arms.

Sounds like a breeze eh? Well, it was… except it took is 6 hours to get to Rayong on the slowest bus in the known universe. Upon arrival we got into a nice long queue in an immigration office which unexpectedly stank of rotten fish and fetid cheese. This was followed by a lovely 45 min boat trip during which our hosts tried to sell us Viagra (I assume Duncan must look as if he needs some to the Thais!).

Unfortunately, I forgot about the sage advice passed along to me by a nice Aussie girl I met. This was that under no circumstances should any clothing be worn in Burma that allows the casual observer to see the shape of your womanly attributes. I suddenly remembered this information with crystal clarity after the first 3 Burmese men I met told me I was incredibly beautiful whilst informing me with my eyes that my good looks had migrated approximately 1 foot South. This realisation was confirmed to me after the Immigration officers accidently took at least 6 closeup pictures of aforementioned attributes (much hilarity and nudging of elbows) before realising the true location of my identifying features and finally taking a picture of my face.

Just 15 hours it took us… I wish I’d just booked a bloody flight to Singapore for us!!!!!!!

Phuket - The Story So Far!!

We’ve had a great old time wandering about here on Phuket. It’s hard to believe we have been here for just over 2 weeks, but time has just started flying in.

For the first week we were here, we stayed in a fab 4 star resort. We’ve now pretty much abandoned any pretence that we are real proper backpackers any longer… but top places to stay are just sooooooooo cheap, I’m sure you will all forgive our departure from our backpacking ways.

We explored the whole of Phuket by renting a car for 4 days… we went to fab places such as the Aquarium, and the butterfly and insect centre where Duncan made lots of new insect pals (they loved him cos he was all sweaty all the time, and they could get a drink off him!).

Our very favourite place though was the Gibbon rehabilitation centre. Its not very well advertised, but it is on the maps, so as we were at a bit of a loose end we thought we would go and check it out. Basically, these guys locate and rescue gibbons that are illegally owned as pets or tourist attractions and try to rehabilitate them into the wild by finding them mates, teaching them appropriate behaviour, and gradually moving them further into the rainforests. There were no gibbons left in the wild on Phuket, and they have now re-patriated 2 groups of former mis-treated Gibbons back into their natural habitat.

Koh Samui Elephant Trekking

After our disappointment with the Samui waterfalls we decided to give elephant trekking a go the next day. I did a bit of research about the elephants they use, and where they’ve come from before we went as I didn’t want to go somewhere that was mistreating these rather majestic beasties.

It turns out that all the trekking elephants used to work in the hardwood logging industry in Northern Thailand until it was banned in 1989. Great news for the rainforests, but the poor old jumbos and their handlers ended up with no jobs and no way to feed themselves. The upshot of this was that they all descended on Bangkok and took to the streets begging for food. Eventually, someone suggested that tourists in the south might really enjoy a nice elephant ride on their holidays and they were all shipped off down here to the islands, where they have been a massive hit and can once more be assured of regular meals and good care.

I have to say, our elephant ride was amazing. We paid 1,200 bhat each for the pleasure, and basically it was a bit of a jungle tour to a waterfall and back. It was absolutely unreal sitting up on such a huge animal. To start with, we were sitting up on one of them chair kind of rigs, but after a wee while the handler asked if we wanted to sit on it’s neck. So there we sat, with our legs getting batted by massive elephant ears, nearly falling off every time Jumbo caught sight of a tasty morsel and turned his big ould head, and getting our backsides bashed to a pulp by its huge shoulders.

Was it worth it? Best day out ever!!

Waterfalls On Koh Samui

We rented a jeep for the day a few days ago on Samui and decided to go and see if we could find some of the natural wonders the island seems to be so famous for. Alas, if something can be commercialised (and ruined in the process), it seems the Thais have got that one sewn up.

We trotted off in search of one of the much advertised Samui waterfalls, and discovered that in their keenness to create viewpoints to get tourists to visit (and extract some cash while they enjoyed the scenery) they’d plastered the entire waterfall in ugly concrete steps, sometimes altering the route of the water and creating ugly man made dams at strategic points. Yes, this meant we could climb the waterfall and enjoy the grotto-like splendour of several tacky plastic animals which are not native to Thailand, combined with the nice garden flowers they had planted to make the nasty old jungle look nicer, but it wasn’t a bloody waterfall anymore!!!!

They even made us pay for parking :(

Koh Samui - Hat Lamai - Aree Bungalows - Thailand

We’ve been camped out on Koh Samui for 3 nights now, and the weather has just gotten more and more stunning every day. I have to say, our method of arrival has been distinctly against the firmly-held principles of backpacking (i.e. to save every penny in order to pass it over to your local friendly Thai barperson).

We jumped a taxi out of the Khao San road, and hopped off to the airport to fly to Samui. For fifty quid each we were expecting standard Easyjet / Ryanair cattle class treatment, but boy did we get a nice surprise. Upon checking in, the highly delightful Bangkok Airlines lady directed us to the passenger lounge. What awaited us there was a garden of unearthly travellers delights. Free drinks, snacks, internet access, and comfortable cushioned seats welcomed us to the start of our journey. When we got on the plane, the pleasantness continued as we were welcomed with a refreshing towel wipe, followed by a refreshing salad with dessert, orange juice, and as much tea and coffee as one could wish for. The flight was just 45 mins, so they barely had time to chuck it all at us before we arrived (in a very, very, good mood).

Koh Samui airport was a great old place. Once we’d reversed up the runway back towards the terminal we were loaded onto gaily bedecked wee carts and conveyed to the arrivals area. This was a wooden shanty-like structure with no walls and a rather festive grass-type roof.

We’d already arranged to be picked up and taken to our bungalow (Aree Bungalows), and we immediately extended our 3 night stay to 7 as soon as we saw the view from our seafront room. Not only that, but I discovered I was in range of the local wireless internet service so I can sit in the sun, work, and watch the world go by. Did I say 7 nights? I think I mean ten… maybe 14!

Hat Lamai is an affiliate paradise!!

I’ve just bought some rather expensive snorkel gear, and Duncan and I are booked up to go out on a day trip (him diving and me not) on Tuesday to the national marine park here. He’s going out again the next day to a site nearer to Koh Tao. Hopefully the beautiful new Canon S80 plus underwater housing we bought in Bangkok will ensure we have some cracking piccies to share.

We’ve only really explored Lamai so far. There are lots of girlie bars here, which Duncan was initially completely oblivious to (cos he’s a good boy and that). Nothing offensive, just lots of scantily clad ladies for rent. There’s a Thai boxing ring here in the centre of town surrounded by some bars, so we will no doubt have a bit of a night out there soon.

Koh Samet & Nagas Bungalows!

All was well with the bus journey to Koh Samet. No hijackings, kidnappings or other similarly untoward events occurred on the way over here. That said, our bags were absolutely excruciating to drag around. To get on and off the ferry to Na Dan we had to climb over 3 other boats. Not easy with two backpacks, two daypacks and a huge lump of dive gear. Our “taxi” to where we’d decided to stay consisted of a green pickup truck with benches up either side. These are very common here and are called sawngthaew. Presumably the pronunciation is intended to be as dangerous as the mode of transportation! Needless to say we have decided that when we get back to Kho San road we will be patronising a baggage store to reduce our load.

We’re staying at nagas bungalows on Ao Hin Khok. Our first two nights were spent in something that looked like a bit of an ould garden shed on stilts with en-suite fan and mosquito nets, costing us the rather hefty sum of 200 bhat a night (just over £3). Today we decided that this was way too big a jump down from what we had been accustomed to and paid an additional 200 bhat for somewhere with an actual bathroom including a toilet pan that had full sit-down privileges (as opposed to a hover over a hole), and walls that extended all the way from the floor to the ceiling. There were even towels and toilet rolls…. What bliss! No more wandering a few hundred metres to the lavvy during the wee small hours for me.

Koh Samet is a national park, and has absolutely gorgeous white sand beaches, and beautiful warm water to swim in. Course, poor old Kirsty here is scared of waves so that does mean my water sport activities are limited to a nice wade whilst Duncan frolics around in the waves like a mad thing.

Not to worry though, I built a sandcastle today using a bucket and spade set kindly lent to me by Otis who has brought his parents, Gavin and Fiona here on their way to settle down in Australia. Strangely enough, they are on the same family relationship visa as us (Fiona is also a Kiwi) and it looks like they are going to settle in Brisbane too. This is great news for us, cos now we have someone to invite over as soon as we arrive (and they have some local babysitters!).

We’ve been doing a healthy dose of relaxing and swimming combined with a bit of random wandering. We got quite drunk the night we arrived with an Irish guy called Tom, this resulted in Duncan falling off the rickety planks that passed for steps up to our hut on his way to the toilet. Fortunately the soft, squishy, muddy ground broke his fall, so no damage done there.

We had another wee night out the tiles at the Silver Sands Resort, which is about a ten minute muddy walk from here, a couple of evenings ago, and to be honest it turned into a cautionary tale for backpackers in Thailand. A nice bloke here at the hostel had been out drinking all day, and at about 1am he suddenly collapsed. Lights oot. Duncan (nice guy that he is) grabbed hold of him along with our friends Tom and Graeme and popped him on the back of a pickup. What they were blissfully unaware of at this stage was that this clever chap had mixed painkillers for his hernia with a hu-uuuuu-ge drinking binge. Just to jazz things up a bit, he’d also procured some diet pills from a dodgy Bangkok pharmacy (these are basically amphetamines). The upshot was that just as our brave lads got him to the top of the steps at the accommodation, he woke up and had a bit of a psychotic episode because he thought he was being attacked. This took the lads somewhat by surprise, and they ended up having to restrain him for over an hour. For their kind efforts Tom got a big flattened nose, and Duncan now has a whole suite of scrapes and bruises, a big bite on his chest, a fat lip, and a wee black eye. Good ol’ Graeme was lucky enough (and somewhat relieved) to be out of the line of fire! Our drunken chum was in such a state they had to hog tie him with duct tape. Unfortunately, just as they were doing this one of our resident Thais decided to kick him full in the face to subdue him. This added a big pile of blood to the general revelry being enjoyed by our unwitting heros and added little in the way of subduement. The police came, but in typical Thai style they had no interest in helping (no money in it I assume).

Meanwhile, I was back at the bar with his wife and 4 year old daughter (didn’t mention those did I??). Wifey ended up heading back to the accommodation and leaving her poor wee four year old with myself and another girl (thank god she was good with kids cos I’m crap). Eventually we all got home just as the sun was about to rise… and old mate was still lying hog tied on the ground with someone sitting watching him to make sure he was ok.

The moral? Well, there are several really. I was honestly starting to think we had crashed an episode of Jerry Springer!

We’ve pretty much done Samet now, so I booked us a flight to Koh Samui today so we are off there on the 12^th of October for a week or so. Living in a hut has been nice, but I’m getting waaaaaayyy too sticky so we have booked a nice beachfront room with aircon, minibar, and satellite TV. This is costing us all of £20 a night (£1400 Bhat), so it’s gonna be awesome.

Khaosan Road & Bangkok

Well, here we are all safe and well in Bangkok! Naturally our flight over here was delayed for two and a half hours due to some freak weather conditions in Europe. Unfortunately Qantas boarded us before telling us of any potential delay so it meant we spent over 13 cramped hours on a plane instead of just under 11.

This also meant we had the dashed good luck to hit Bangkok at the peak of the rush hour... so we got to enjoy the scenic delights of a Thai traffic jam for an enthralling hour on the way to the hotel. Naturally the Taxi driver made us pay the road tolls (not entirely sure he was supposed to do that) and then ripped us off for some of the change. We could hear the rustling of our cash disappearing into his pocket on its way back over to us! It was probably all of 20p, but to add insult to injury when he dropped us off at the opposite end of Khaosan road from where we'd asked him, he whispered in Duncan's ear "no tip?". I gave him 20 bhat (30p) and my best dirty look... I wasn't up to much else after 14 hours of travel.

Finally we got into our hotel after beginning to seriously consider the notion that the fates were conspiring against us. We're staying at the Buddy Lodge. Its hardly a typical backpacker type of joint as we're paying 2,800 bhat (About £38) a night for it, but we wanted to have a bit of luxury combined with the massive freak show that is Khao San road for our first few days.

Seriously, if you are thinking of coming here I would recommend Buddy Lodge. It's all done out in tradtional thai style with wood paneled walls, a spa, swimming pool, gym, and most importantly, satellite telly. Our room has a rather swish four poster bed in it, a mini bar, and a huge patio area with small garden. Naturally its too damned hot for us to go outside, but sometimes we open the shutters and admire it from afar.

We haven't done much whilst we've been here to be honest, the whole first 24 hours was a combination of sleeping and getting used to the humidity. Then Duncan got all sick from something for a day, and today we went shopping for our Thai Backpackers uniform. I am now the proud owner of one pair of fisherman’s pants, one cheeseclothy

kinda shirt thing, a headband, and the absolutely essential beer Chang and Redbull t-shirt combo. All of this stuff has probably cost me less than £10, but I've still haggled with the stall owners to get that essential discount on each purchase. It's no fun shopping here if you don't get 10p off!

Khaosan road itself can only be described as a cash extracting shithole (and some parts of it do have that mysterious eau de raw sewage scent to it), but a strangely compelling one at that. We're constantly bombarded everywhere we go with offers of cheap 20b tuk tuk tours (where you actually get kindapped by your driver and endlessly taken to tailors shops, travel agents and anywhere else he might get a commission), invites to ping pong bars (too rude to mention, and again a slight risk of kidap and possibly robbery and general rip off), cheap tailor-made suits, pad thai, fruit, springrolls and a plethora of strange and crappy wares from street vendors.

We’re leaving proper sightseeing till we return at the end of our trip. We've just been and bought two tickets to Koh Samet from the hotel travel agency. They cost us 700 bhat each, I've seen them cheaper but the agency looked well established. A well known Khao San scam is apparently selling people tickets to places, and the bus driver dumps them off at either a local bus stop or buggers off at a service station half way there, leaving them to make their own way to their destination on a local bus. My theory is that a more established agency won't be involved with operators that do this. However, I guess we will find out tomorrow if my theory is good or not! One thing is sure, the travel agency guys will get a visit from one unhappy Scottish lady if we find ourselves stood at a random Thai bus-stop with two backpacks, two bags, and Duncan's huge dive gear bag!

Bringing The Blog Up to Date.....

OK, here it is. Duncan and Kirsty, the story so far (Well, this years story. I couldn't be bolloxed remembering what we did last year as well!).

Imagine if you will an exciting sci-fi type soundtrack , with text travelling up a darkened screen seeming to fade into infinity....

Gary & Ciara Come Up For A Reunion
First off, back in February we had a visit from Gary and Ciara who were my estwhile drinking chums from the Yellow Submarine in Brisbane.

They did bring a rather neat little extra guest with them, in the form of a beautiful daughter, Aiofe, who made her entrance into the world in April last year. She seems none the worse for having been conceived in a tent somewhere on the East Coast of Australia. In fact, if her rather sunny disposition and good looks are anything to go by, Duncan and I will definately be investing in a camping trip when it's baby making time ;)

Check out some pictures of Gary, Ciara, and aiofe in our online gallery.

Andrew & Miriam Come To Visit - Snowed In!!!
Our friends Andrew & Miriam came to visit right at the start of March. We had all sorts of fun activities planned for them, but unfortuately the Scottish weather had a thing or two to say about that and we all got snowed in with a 2 foot fall of snow overnight. Poor A&M had to stay up here an extra 24 hours whilst the Airports cleared their runways off.

I'm not sure they were all that disappointed though as the snow seemed to bring out the "inner child" in all of us. I Built a snow squirrel, and the boys had a bit of a snowball fight followed by the creation of a life size valkyre type snowlady which had predictably huge breasts (perhaps they were building their ideal partner?). These were later removed by us to prevent mental scarring of the kids who live downstairs. Same wee tots were soon involved in the fatal demise of my snow squirrel. That's the last kind gesture the wee ruffians get from us!

Trip To Lochcarron
Later that Month we headed off up to the Scottish Highlands for an Internet-free week, and to celebrate my birthday. We stayed in a beautiful traditional cottage in Lochcarron, where Duncan's family originally lived before emigrating to New Zealand. Locals were unsurprised to discover that his family name was "Mckenzie" as that particular surname would appear to be the local version of "Smith".

We had lots of fun during our stay, met lots of wildlife, drove up a mountain in our incredibly elderly car, visited the Isle Of Skye, and it also snowed on my birthday. The best bit about the birthday celebrations though was getting engaged, which I thought was a pretty great way to round off the holiday.

Weekend in London
The weekend after our trip up north the bags were packed again and we headed off down to London so I could do a bit of business schmoozing and boozing. We stayed on for the weekend and caught up with Andrew and Miriam and went to meet Duncan's cousin Sheree, her hubby James, and their rather gorgeous wee son, Logan (fine Scottish name there guys, well done!).

Jo Henley Comes To Visit
Duncans friend from way back in New Zealand popped up to visit us for a weekend. Fairly short and sweet, but we did manage to give her a mini tour of Stirlingshire & Edinburgh, including the famous "exploding bottle of tomato sauce" experience at the Malt Shovel Inn on Cockburn Street (Pronounced Co-burn Street. Nuff said.)

We're Off Again - No More Scottish Winter For Us!

Well, we've been in dear old blighty for 18 months now. Having enjoyed two thoroughly miserable winters we've made the decision to go off travelling again in Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.

Duncan's visa runs out in 6 months and at that stage we can either arrange to get wed (good old traditional values embedded in the visa system here), or we can hook it. We've gotten engaged, but we think that's quite enough for the time being... so off we hook!

It will be hard taking another year or so to travel and enjoy white sands, crystal waters and several of the worlds natural wonders, but we'll just have to try and make a go of it for the sake of all our friends and family who will surely be worried about our welfare during this trying time ;)

We will be living in Australia for a wee while after travelling. They don't need us to be married to give me a spousal visa so we're heading off to dear old Brisvegas town to look for a trendy billet for well travelled lovebirds. Hurahh!

I've decided to resurrect my old website and add in a diary, and also to take on the job of updating the site with what we get up to before we go. Duncan's got one, but he's been rubbish at keeping it updated, so he has now been officially sacked as webmaster and I'll try to pop as much as I can on the site from our adventures so far!

Duncan's new job is "site photographer". He'll perform this task to the best of his abilities using his brand new and rather swanky Canon 350SD which I bought him as an engagement gift. Yes, that's right. If Heineken made girlfriends, they'd all be Scottish and called Kirsty.