Intrepid as F*&k

Checking in from Chian Mai. Had a wicked day sifting around this city (1300 odd km north from where the last entry). Took plenty of different twists and turns, having just flown in from Phuket at 5pm and browsed amongst the (massive) Nighttime Walking Market on the streets last night.

Okay so started out today aiming to do the 'Chiang Mai Walking Tour', as described by the lonely planet. But all of 20minutes into it we got talking to this old monk. (Old probably an understatement, this guy was decrepid! Must've been at least 110) and he's all like "Come with me... I show you my place". So we thought 'yeah all good, sounds cool and pretty intrepid'. Ended up shouting him lunch (though we were stopping for a cup of tea - then he orders a cupla plates of mains!) and, while at his monastry, getting a commentated guide thorugh all 4 of his massive photo albums. Photos of him doing his 'monk thang' in Paris, India, Australia, NZ, everywhere'. Basically just posing with people and attractions..got pretty boring... he kept going on about all these friends he's got over the world. Then he tells us he's spending a week in the nearby region of Sukothai as of tomorrow morning and we must go with him: even gets on his mobile and gives a holler to some mate of his who's supposedly a 'Dr', the Doc then speaks to me on the phone and is all like 'yeah yeah, come to Sukothai.....blah blahh.. All good and well, but we'd already sussed a bus trip up north, via Chiang Mai and up to Myamar / Burma to renew our Thailand visa's tomorrow. Promised we'd come visit later in the week, but he wasn't having a bar of it. After another few attempts, he finally accepted we weren't gonna hang with him and we continued on the tour of the monastry with him. But he just kept wanting pictures of HIM next to different statues! Weird. This guy was one serious photo-slut.

Agreed on an exit strategy and started telling him we had a taxi to catch at 1pm, but he was seriously clingy. Ended up having to visit one of his on-monastry friends with him and also flick through HIS photo albums (as quickly as we could) before he'd let us go. Bizzare encounter.... I always thought monks were cruisy dudes. In all fairness he was pretty funny and freakin old. Maybe just a bit lonely?

Post-monk ordeal we tuk-tuk'd our way to a silver smith, as a while ago we hatched a plan to design and produce some top secret custom-made silverware. First got taken to a silver jewellery shop, but after explaining exactly what we were after to both the proprietor and our driver, we ended up at this tiny three-man jewellery shack. After some drawing of pictures and broken thai/english negotiations, we think we've ordered exactly what we're after. Will find out in a couple of days when we return to proof the design...

Drifted wherever the tuktuk driver wanted to take us for about an hour... checking out some pretty sweet silk and jewellery stores before we spotted a sweet soup-kitchen ideal for lunch, where we orderd by pointing to pictures on the wall of what we were after. Spotted a local Snooker hall across the road and thought we'd see what it was all about. Ended up shooting a few games of pool amonst the locals with a cupla Singha (luckily none of them watching, as out skills were utterly shite).

Since its still Health and Wellbeing Week, we opted to try walk back to the 'Old City' and our guesthouse. Figured it shouldn't be more than five or so kays. A few minutes into it we hit this classic clothing store that sold uniforms - for Thai people! After a bit of trial and errorm we ended up scoring these awesome thai boy-scouts shirts, complete with our own selection of badges and our name/call-sign sewed on in thai. Badass!

Back on the walk and before long we spotted what resembled a marketplace about a block off the main road. Headed into it and realised it was MASSIVE. (think the Chinesse Oriental Markets that used to be on the waterfront in Aucks - but bigger) Absolutely teeming with local purchasers and vendors selling all kinds of food, clothes, drink, a butchery, army-surplus merchant....everything. Explored it for ages, and it goes without sayign that we ate even more food.

Spending the evening chilling at the Ghouse tonight as we leave for a 7am-8pm daytrip furhter up north via some hotsprings, the city of Chiang Rai and up to the border with Burma/Myamar tomorrow. This trip primarily just to walk across the border, do a 180 and re-enter thailand so that our 30-day tourist visa is renewed; but sweet that we'll get to check out some destinations that we might spend a few days in during the next 1-2 weeks we've got. Plan after that is to spend a day mountainbiking or trekking here before either heading to Chiang Ria or west to a small town called Pai.

Briefly, Ko Phi Phi was pretty damn sweet. Highlight was probably meeting up with Alex and his mates a cupla nights and getting on the beers with them! We had a ferry-bus-ferry combo to get from the east to the west coast. Realising that it was gonna be 7-odd hours of cramped and uncomfortable travel, we decided to start boofing beers as soon as we got on the first ferry. Got through our first doz relatively quickly... and spent most of the rest of the journey talking smack and generally enjoying ourselves.

Immediately fell alsleep (despite it only being like 4pm) as soon as we'd secured some accom on Ko Phi Ph,i, but ended up hitting a dinner buffet later that night and running into Alex and his mates. Made for pretty mean times. Phi phi had quite a diff feel than the east coast islands, and had a different demographic of tourists. Heaps more oldies and europeans rather than the loose aussies of the east. Did a mean half-day longtail boat trip around smaller surrounding islands in the magnificently translucent waters. More mean snorkelling and some sweet swimming in a lagoon, as well as a cupla hours at the bay where the movie The Beach was filmed. That place was aight. Funnily enough bumped into the two norweigan girls that we did our camel trek through the desert in Jaisalmer (India) with the next day. Ridiculous!

Absolute shitta of a boat ride back to the mainland from Phi Phi before getting here. Seriously felt like they had 4x the maximum capacity of people onboard. Did my usual chuck-on-ipod-and-fall-asleep-on-the-floor trick. Never fails! Then we were onto our flight to Chiang Mai.... but with enough time to play a bit of imprompt circket in the airport waiting room. Niiiiiiice.

Sawat dee krap

Came across to Ko Tao from Ko Phanang a few days ago now: on a super overcrowded boat that was rocking in the swell something chronic. no seats: just the occasional bench and a whooooole lotta floorspace. Guessing it was going to develop into a marathon of boredom, i managed to lie down under one of the bench seats and sleep through most of it! Coz we'd been told that it was super peak season in Ko Tao and that if we were offered and accom we should snap it up, we split just before the boat hit the pier. Dom in charge of getting our backpacks from the 'storage' pile while i boosted to the front of the queue and tried to line up for the tout's tryng to sell accom. Ended up grabbing a lift on the back of a hilux to some kinda hostel/hutt... and getting one of the last two hutts on the whole of Chalok Baan Kao (beach), for all of NZ$16 per night. Niiiiiiice. After we'd checked in Dom noticed there wasn't a cistern or a flusher button on the toilet; so we we forced to work out how the tap and bucket next to the bowl work. Charming.

Just sifted around that beach and through all the diff restraunt/dive/snorkel places for the rest of the day, as were feeling pretty wasted from the bus/boat combo earlier in the day. It started raining late in the piece, which was interested coz didnt expect it on the tropical island! Things got a bit spicy when Dom was woken at 3am by drips on his pillow. From the ceiling. The rain was pretty much torrential... and it turned out that this wasn't the only leak in our ceiling. So got up and managed to balance all our bags on this clothes-rack thing that we found in the room to keep them off the wettening floor. Good times!

Started walking to the main tourist beach the next morning (Sairee Beach), but were told it was aaaages away, so opted to hire a cupla mountain bikes from a streetside vendor. Sure, the looked mean: front shocks, back shocks, 21 speed. Untill we got going on them and realised that the shocks didnt move an inch and nor did the gears! Made it to Sairee on the 21-cum-1 speed mtbs in about 20 mins though, and sifted around for a bit; went for a swim and the likes. Wasn't THAT much there that grabbed me, as it was waaaay touristy and generally full of young teenie-bopping aussies. bloody aussies. ended up having a decently big night though, as (funnily enough) it was Australia Day. Meaning the australian owner of one of the pubs was putting on a free bbq and 2-for-1 drinks. Ideal.

Had seen some signs up for a daily yoga sessions, so hit that up from 4-6pm. Turned out it was 'Hatha' yoga, which is a really intense strain that is all about really hot temperatures and not just postures, but linking like 12 of them together in big breathless sets. Intense I tell ya. We were dripping sweat onto the yoga mats barely minutes into it. The yogi was this totally cool chilled-out scottish dude with dreads (and a limber m*&therf*&ing spike). Got talking to him after the sweat session and it turns out he's travelled heaps...... quite a bit of it accompanying Michael Campbell on the PGA Tour as his personal yoga instructor. Pretty mean! He'd just built the yoga studio we were in and it was pretty top notch - mean as teak and stuff. Also had resident snake chilling about us on the open rafters. Mean.

Afte a swim to cool off we boosted back on the bikes for showers and a cupla beers to kick the night off. Trouble was, we found some buffet-style cuisine not far from our doorstep. Ended up settling for 'starters' of steak and seafood close to home, before catching a ute into town and getting amongst the freebie feed up for grabs. Ended up quite a cool night as we sifted in and out of Aussie Bar (real name irrelevant, as it was packed full of dirty ockers) while checking out the fire-dancing antics on the beach as well as what some other bars had to offer.

Picked up a cuple of 150cc quad bikes (ye-ah!) the next day, and took them for some serious blats around the island. The main roads here are paved, then there are dirty roads, and the rest are super-ratty-boulder-strewn lanes of death. Awesome fun on a quad though! That day we picked up snorkelling gear and went on wicked offroad adventures - getting loose on the quads in search of beaches and bays that offered good reefs and flourescent fish.

The north end of Sairee was pretty mint snorkelling. Dom was tripping out on all the underwater lifeforms and their technicoloured dreamcoats as it was his first time. Saw some awesome electric-blue looking snapper and deeper out some ridiculous coral that looked like giant brains and buds on a stick. Insane. The completely clear water at Freedom Bay was also pretty mean to snorkel and did a good job at offering fishies from all different parts of the colour spectrum. Also bought a set of bats+balls for this tennis-like game that everyone seems to play on beach here. Have, predictably, invented our own version on this game....including 10 point bonus for scoring a body shot on the other person. Great fun for the shallows!

We had a night on the cocktails with this aussie girl who it turned out was on the same ute-taxi with us off the pier. Transpired that she'd just come out off something like 5 months backpacking around India: had camel-trekked in the same desert as us and was even at the same new years eve party that the boys ended up at in Goa! Pretty coincidental.

Sussed our exit strategy to Phuket today, which unluckily is gonna involved a whole day of boat+bussing. Opted for the day-trip coz figured it's been impossible enough to sleep on a bus anyway admist the poo smell, the mozzies, the cramped seats, the heat and the fear of getting stuff knicked from bags.

Think i'd better jog back to the hutt. Oh yeah was hoping to get pics up, but places here dont have the camera-card-reader-thingee. Phuket maybe!

Nick

Been a while

Currently on the island of Koh Phangan, home of the notorious full moon parties. Dom's sleeping off a whiskey bucket hangover and I'm having a tough time trying to find a scooter vendor with scooters to spare. Guts.

Arrived here on this DIY ferry (two hundy people on a barge with a truck engine spinning the rotors, full exposed for all to see) from Koh Samui. Misread the Lonely Planet and ended up paying some ute taxi driver 200 baht to do a loop of the town and drop us off like 50 metres from where we started. My bad.

Hired some mint bikes yesterday and blatted around the island stopping at beaches that looked inviting. Grabbed delish soups and noodles from the street and hit cupla the bars along the beach last night. This place is crawling with aussies. Absolutely crawling. May as well be the set of Home and Away! Got a bit sketchy when Dom managed to lock the keys to his scooter in the boot at a beach about half an hour out of town. Captain Gimp. Ended up having to boost back to the dude we hired them off, in the rain, riding two on my bike. Classic that the 'spare' key they gave us didn't even fit his bike, as we found out when we mished it all the way back! In the end Dom managed to get his McGyver on and fish his original key out of the boot using an expertly bent stick. (Did I mention he's a dab hand at defeating bad guys using nothing more than a mirror and a box of matches?)

Ummmm so before Ko Samui we were at Khao Sok. Paid for an absolute joke "off the beaten track" guided tour of the National Park..... transpired our guide didnt even speak english! Maybe thats why he resorted to pointing out boring shit like "berries" and "elephant footprint" (which was CLEARLY just a big puddle). The squashed snake and frog we found on the road when walking back from the national park were probably the most exciting fauna of the day!

Day before that we made a DIY trip (saving us 1800 baht!) to this massive dam and lake about 90kms from our pad. Gave the bikes a decent workout and managed to get lost a few times - all the more adventure. Can't remember it's name, but the dam created this maaaasssive lake - stretching over 130kays. So yeah, went for a bit of a cruise on it and explored the roads winding around the lake.

Back to the beach.
Rav

Just came back from a meeaaaaaaan day on a cupla motorbikes that we hired yesterday. Sure, they look a little bit like scooters, but they hit 110kmhr often enough and look bad-ass enough that we're calling them 'Choppers'.

Covered around 170kms on them today: first just boosting 60kays to this town called Takupa, mainly coz it has the nearest ATM and we were going on broke, then to a rural part of the coast that was ravaged by hte '04 tsunami. Grab a wicked street-feed for two for all of $4NZ on the way too - yum as chicken/duck on rice dishes plus miso-soup type thing in a bowl. Primo!

From here us and the choppers jumped onto this rickety canoe and ended up at a nearby island - with a name along the lines of Khao Kao Ko. Yup, same sound repeated three times. We resort-crashed some posh place and had a few drinks before getting massages and exploring some more on the bikes.

Found something signposted as an "ancient village" and "olden town", so we followed the dirt track for a few kays...only to be wildly dissapointed at the pile of bricks that the information board claimed were from 10AD. Swinging back through Takpua on the way home we found some markets and downed some freshly-bbq'd chicken kebabs, corn cobs and what looked kinda like bacon. Didnt taste it.

As the sun set behind us we got the cameras out - even managed to get some footage of overtaking Dom at supra-100kmph, before realising that we were running precariously low on gas (despite filling up twice already). Ended up kinda dawdling the bikes home for the last 20kms as a result, which was a good call weighed agaisnt the option of running out of gas up in the hills as dusk set in!

Sweet day all up. Ironic that we opted for a day at the coast/beach when we're living in the jungle, but was wicked getting bikes because of the freedom and autonomy that come with them. Was awesome seeing all the countryside and towns outside of what everybody sticking to their Lonely Planet sees! Think we'll jump into Khao Sok National Park tomorrow for a day hiking and hunting killer animals.

Nick

Kia Ora

Just strolled for about a kay from our riverside bamboo hutt at Kao Sok National Park in the Surat Thani province of Thailand to the local dairy/internet/massage station. Have been in Thailand for 3 or 4 days now, and loving it.

Coming off the travel marathon from Mumbai-Calcutta-Bangkok, we pretty much slepft for our first 20 hours in Bangkok. Mike flew out home-bound the next day so we cruised to the airport with him for a final munch on some final curry. Spent the remainder of that day and the next immersed in the INTENSE tourist ghetto that is Kao San and exploring some of Bangkok in the search of a sweeeeet deal on a couple of mac-tastic suits each; stumbled upon the massive mall that is the MBK centre, where I bought a wicked pair of short-range walkie-talkies for leading the revolution throughout the rest of the country; chose our favourite fabrics / cuts for the tailored suits, which will look brand-spankingly wicked come first day at work and wasted the evening drinking on Kho San. Ran into some sweet aussie dudes who were across the hall from us at the hostel and had a big night with them, though we collectively have very few recollections.

Just came off a 19 hour bus mish south from Bangkok to where we are now, where the plan is to do some canoe trips, tube down the Kao Sok River, explore the nearby lake and maybe hit some elephant trekking. Today we're gonna grab some motorbikes and explore the local village plus the national park visitors centre for maps etc. Been eating heaps of streetside pad-thai's (all of like $1NZ and super-yum), as well as random food at bus-stops. Our exit strategy is probably to move from here futher south to Phuket for a bit, before probably swapping to the east coast for the Full Moon Party on Ko Samui and hopefully rendezvousing with Alex/Melza who's here for a week.

Looking backwards to hangin' in the 'gaam' (village) around Navsari, it was mean. Got a serious relax on and had most of our needs catered to by Dad's cousin and his wife. We stated at my late grandfather's house, on a field of sugarcane and rice crops. It was mint having a quality hot shower (best in India) and conveniences like a fridge. Ate waaaaaay too much. Slept waaaaaaay too much. It was awesome being in a part of India where my (attempted) Gujurati was actually understood by the locals. On the first day we grabbed a rickshaw into town and picked up a cheap blender and HEAPS of fresh fruit to make smoothies and stuff with. In the morning we'd have fresh chai brewed for us and in the evenings we got through heaps of chicken - including on a 'hota' (Indian style barbeque)

Turned out we had a few less days in the gaam than I'd initially thought, but think we managed to cover all the bases with a few trips into the village, a trip out to Dandi beach (starting point of Mahatma Ghandi's Salt March: we rode half the trip on the back of a rick-shaw truck, coz thats how we DO), special guest starring at a local 'lagan' (wedding)(awesome food), and way loads of sleep ins. It was sweet that some rellies from NZ were also in gaam for a few weeks too. Had a pretty intense last day with some obligatory visisitng, and meeting some rellies that I didnt know I had, before getting to Mumbai on a train and attempting (failing) to get comfortable for the evening at the domestic airport in Mumbai for about 10 hours before our flight to Kolkati. Dom assumed beggar-posture: lying on the floor between rows of seats, casually tapping travellers with hand-to-mouth gestures. Poor hungry bastard.

Sweet, off to brave the humidity and find some bikes to burn around on. Pictures in the near future maybe!
Nick