Going out with a bang - Sihanoukville and the Full Moon Party on Koh Phangan

Well, well, well. What a mental couple of weeks we've had, and with that, an incredible 8 months away. As most of you know we're back in the UK now, so at last we've had time to put together a post about Sihanoukville and Koh Phangan. We wanted to go out with a bang that's exactly how it ended up.

From Siem Reap we headed to Sihanoukville on the south coast of Cambodia (via Battambang, which is barely worth mentioning unfortunately, despite being one of The Lonely Planet guide's top five "highlights" - well done LP you did it again). With only three weeks left until our flight home we were determined to get as much sun as possible, and squeeze in as much partying as possible, what better destinations for both! In Sihanoukville we stayed a few minutes from the beach, where it felt like a small festival every night and there were rows and rows of candle-lit tables along the sand with countless BBQ's serving fresh Tuna steak, Barracuda, huge king prawns, and of course the usual beef, chicken, pork etc, not to mention a pint of ice cold beer for 50 cents (US)!!!

Big fat Tuna steaks and all sorts of other seafood, on ice next to beach

We arrived in Sihanoukville about 6 hours later than expected, because the transport in Cambodia is ridiculously disorganised. If you ever get a bus in Cambodia, multiply the journey time by 1.5 and you might not be as disappointed. Anyway, the late bus caused us problems. We wanted a nice cheap, but good Guesthouse near the beach, but so did everyone else, and their buses arrived in droves throughout the day, hours before we go there. We spent about 1/2 hour lugging our bags from one guesthouse to the other and in the end had no other option but to settle with a hostel called Utopia (the irony).

We had a 19 person dorm, where the beds were in two levels, all joined in a row next to each other, and the mattresses were pieces of foam that had clearly been run over by a steam roller - wafer thin. Still, it only cost us $2 a night (almost everything is paid for in US$ by the way) and "it was only for one night". We dropped our stuff off in the dorm and had a quick beer in the quiet bar next to the hostel before going out for some food before a much needed early night. We strolled down to the beach, ate some nice food and then thought we'd just ask a local where was good for a party if we felt the need later. He said Utopia would be banging all night... Uh oh. Surely not, we were the only ones in there an hour ago and we did quite like the idea of sleeping at some point that night.

Back we went, and low and behold, a full on pool party was on, with buy one get one free 50 cent beers and all kinds of other ridiculously cheap drinks offers all night, people jumping (or being pushed) into the pool, and half of Sihanoukville partying hard.

The pool party at Utopia, our dorm is just off the to the side of the picture. It was almost pointless having walls.

After that there was no point trying to go to bed, our dorm was right next to the pool and the music was as loud there as it was outside... so the inevitable happened. We stayed up most of the night and joined the party which turned out to be pretty fun, and decided tomorrow we'd get up early and move to a nicer place.

That plan didn't really work, we woke up late and feeling rough so another night in utopia it was. Some more friends we'd met in Siem Reap arrived so the night turned out much the same as the one before. At last on the third day we managed to move to a private room down the road and could pick and choose whether we wanted to be in the party or not.

Me, Fia, Becky and Callum after we realise trying to go to sleep is pointless

The after party at JJ's down the road

As well as guzzling down buckets of Mekong Whiskey mixed with Redbull and Coke, 50 cent beers, and dancing like complete idiots to Barbara Streisand, we did an awesome boat trip with a company called Sun Tours. It was $25 for the day and we set off the next morning to visit three really nice islands down the coast, including snorkeling over a coral reef, fishing, an amazing Cambodian buffet with all sorts of culinary treats, aaaaaaaand, jumping of the top deck of the boat 7m down to the water below. Amazing!

Our boat, the top deck is 7m from the water.



Fia taking the plunge

It was actually one of the highlights, in fact I think our mate Glenn jumped off more than a dozen times. Whenever we needed anything from the bar on the lower deck we'd just jump off the top of the boat and swim round. Very cool. We also did a small trek to a secluded beach on another island and waded through a mangrove swamp later in the afternoon. The guide warned us not to wee in the mangroves because there are nasty little barbed fish that swim up your plumbing and take up residence there. It was hard to relax after that.

Secluded island off the cost of Cambodia


Fishing boats heading out at sunset

To top off the day we headed down to the beach to have our last meal together before parting ways, followed by one last party in Sihanoukville - their newly put together "black moon party". Basically a very small version of the full moon party in Koh Phangan which was in some ways a much nicer experience - if it stays quite small it certainly won't be a bad thing. Between the BBQ and the party we were given free shots by the guys who ran the restaurant/bar/shack (called Musli's) and bought some fireworks which we were assured were safe to set off while holding them... I'm not 100% sure they were now that I think back on it, but the guy who sold them seemed very sure!

Free shots for dessert!


Me and Craig with the "safe" fireworks

Sihanoukville was very pleasantly surprising. We'd heard Serendipity beach, near where we stayed, was a bit of a shit hole and really touristy, but we found it to be very welcoming and a far cry from the likes of Phuket in Thailand. Although it had clearly been developed for tourists very recently it was still very welcoming, and felt like it's still part of the real Cambodia. The locals were very friendly and the population of tourists wasn't too high. Hopefully things won't grow too far out of proportion in the next few years. We'd definitely go back, especially seeing as it's all so cheap!

Fia doing fire poi on the beach


I *heart* Dolphin, the beginning of the party.


Glenn and Zoe, Abi and Craig, Me and Fia

As with the journey to Sihanoukville, getting away was equally as frustrating. An 11 hour journey (which meant we could connect with the next bus in Bangkok and arrive in Koh Phangan within 24 hours) turned out to take 16 hours. Balls. To make things worse I'd gotten some bites, or was having a strange reaction to something, possibly my malaria tablets, which was beginning to bother me. It was getting unbearably itchy but like you do, I decided to just leave it a see what happens.

We got the Bangkok at midnight. There was no hope of finding a bus to carry on south so we had to find a hostel for the night. Everywhere was full, after 1/2 hour we found one place with a free room, it was the last one so we paid through the nose for it and took it. By the time we'd worked out a plan for the ext day it was 3am. The plan involved getting up at 6am to get back on the road. Awesome, three hours sleep, increasingly itchy everything and getting worse, and we just paid double price for this crappy room. After yet more faffing in the morning we found a bus at 9:30am to take us to Surat Thani where we could link up with a ferry and finally get to Koh Phangan. That didn't happen either! We could only find one ferry company who booked ferry's and they pretty much refused to sell us the night boat ticket, which we were very annoyed about at the time. We're not even sure why now, but it turned out for the best. On seeing my arms, Jimmy the tour operator immediately told me to hop on his bike and he took me to the doctor around the corner, turns out it wasn't something that was going to go away, or stop getting worse without injections at the hospital.

You can imagine how sketchy the Thai hospital was... but no. To my surprise it was actually the best hospital I've ever seen. Immaculate, I was seen immediately, blood test given, results within an hour, two injections and a pack of pills later and I was feeling better already, and it only cost me £20. What a relief.

Minging bites / rash

The next day we arrived in Koh Phangan, what we hoped would take 24 hours had taken us 60 hours, but the next day we met Bod and the final party began, the sun was beaming down on us and we were very happy.

The first night we landed an awesome little bungalow no more than 20m from the beach in Ban Tai, Koh Phangan. The resort was called Seagate Resort and it was a lovely spot to unwind after the long journey. Their Thai food menu was very good and the little shack/bar on the beach was an amazing spot to watch sunset with a cold bottle of Beer Chang.

Our beach-side bungalow

Looking back at the resort, so peaceful.

From Ban Tai we headed to Haad Rin for 5 days, the heart of the Full Moon party area. Luckily the 19 person dorm we'd booked was clean and waaaaaaaaaaay better than any of us could imagine. On arrival David, the owner of Dancing Elephant Hostel, gave us all an hour long lecture on how not to end up in hospital, in a 3m x 3m prison cell without a passport and £2,000 worse off, beaten up, set on fire, or lost at sea. At first it seemed a bit overkill but as within moments of the sun going down it was obvious that this advice was extremely important. As usual it was the people staying in the hostel that really made it what it was. David was brilliant at creating an atmosphere that promoted making friends and the whole thing from start to finish was an incredible experience.

Our library of photos for this part of the trip isn't that great because taking Fia's camera out on Full moon night, or any night when we might drink a bucket of Sang Som, was just plain stupid. The first two nights turned into a foam party with people getting covered head to toe in foam, soaked through, covered in sand, falling off picnic benches, and throwing their flip flops into the sea shouting at the sky. Hmmm, don't know who that was...

The buckets there are so strong and so cheap it's dangerous. In your mind one bucket equals one drink, so you get another after the first, after all they only cost £3 - £4 each, that's one pint in England. By then you've already had 350ml of Sang Som (Thai rum), mixed only with one can of coke and a bottle of the dodgey Thai redbull, or even more ridiculous M-150, and you don't really need another one! Beyond that it all goes a bit blurry and before you know it it's 5am.

The bucket stands, check out the signage!

FOOOOAAAAM! Can you spot the Bod? (Photo courtesy of Mike Pennington)

Luckily we managed to avoid taking part fire limbo, or jumping over the giant skipping rope dowsed in Diesel and set on fire. I mean lucky too, everywhere you looked there were people on crutches, bandaged up or bleeding / burnt. There was a guy at Full Moon with his who had clearly been injured the previous night, but that wasn't going to stop him. Tucked down the back of his bright pink short-shorts were his crutches, then in his hands were two buckets of Sang Som - good to see he got his priorities right!

Fire Limbo, insane. one guy lit a cigarette on his way under and it was a notch or two lower than this guy is doing. Impressive stuff.

Someone getting wiped out by the flaming skipping rope of doom! Not impressive, just plain dumb.

Apparently the local authoratative figures (rumoured to be mafia) know that it's dangerous and actively encourage it, the doctors wouldn't get paid without all the accidents. In 2 years the number of doctors clinics has risen from 2 to 27 because it makes so much money! We were told the bars all sell glass bottles of beer, whilst no bins are provided, so that the bottles end up on the floor (and unfortunately in the sea as well) meaning broken shards of glass gets walked into the sand and anyone who doesn't know about it and walks bare foot gets cut up and needs medical assistance. The same goes for loads of things on the island. Hiring a moped can be disastrous. The contracts on the bikes state that the user has to pay huge fees to fix any repairs. The guy below us didn't heed David's advice and unfortunately he slipped off the bike giving it just a few minor scratches, he was ordered to pay a few hundred quid before he got his passport back. We even heard they over inflate the tyres to increase the likelihood of accidents on the sandy roads. I'm probably sounding like a goody goody by highlighting these negatives but it is interesting to know these things, especially when a few simple improvements would stop the beaches around Haad Rin from being trashed and less people getting broken in the process. It was a very fun experience though, thankfully we were fortunate to receive the warnings so we could have a ridiculously mental, but slightly safer time.

The Full Moon Party itself was basically a bigger, more mental version of the nights leading up to it. Before everyone went out we went shopping for the most stupid looking day-glow vests and things we could find, along with fluorescent body paint, plastic necklaces, rings, and glasses. The beach was absolutely rammed, 20,000+ people swarm to Haad Rin for the Full Moon night. It's probably about as mental as you can imagine. Everyone stays up all night and at around 7am the sun rises at Sunrise beach (erm, hence the name...). Unfortunately for us, just as the sun came up, an old guy, probably in his 60's or 70's, resembling a wizard appeared. He was wearing a purple robe. Shortly after he appeared he de-robed and ran into the sea naked. Who knows what happened to him after that, we reckon he came to the original Full Moon party, lost his ticket home and has been there ever since.

Sunrise beach the night after the Full Moon Party

Aside from going completely bonkers and probably shaving 5 years off our lives, we did also get out to a few of the more idyllic beaches on the island. First off we went to Ban Mae Hat to the north. A boat trip was really expensive so we haggled for a taxi and got what we paid for... 15 people in a small pick up, I had to hang off the back and there are also two people sharing the front passenger seat! The beach was pretty nice, a sandy spit joined the beach with the island Koh Ma.

Getting cosey on the way to the beach


Holding on tight!


The Dancing Elephant crew in front of Koh Ma

My favourite though, was "Bottle Beach" (thankfully not named because it's covered in smashed bottles like Sunrise beach) also known as Ban Khuat. Again we haggled pretty hard and got a good price, this time there was ample seating but the guys driving the boat were about 12 years old! Still we made it and the day was amazing.

Have you got a license for that, mate?


Thai long boat at Bottle Beach


Sunset at Sunset beach (the opposite side of the headland to Sunrise beach where all the madness happens)

After 5 days of madness and little sleep it was time to say bye to all our new friends, and also the Bod, who was heading north to Chang Mei. Fia and I headed back to Seagate Resort in Ban Tai for one last Green Curry and amazing sunset before the 30 hour journey back to England. Needless to say we are very sad to know it's over, but being home has turned out to be quite nice so far. Now all we need to do is work our arses off so we can afford a 2 week holiday somewhere equally as exciting next year, and the year after, and the year after.

There will be one last post with all the highlights, top 5's, and various statistics from the trip. See you soon if we haven't already!

Cambodiaaaaaarrghhh!! (Or more specifically, Siem Reap and the Temples of Angkor Wat)

Hello!

So, we arrived in Cambodia after a pretty long journey from Phuket - it took us just under a day to get from one hostel to the next.  Our first stop in Cambodia was Siem Reap - we would be there for New Years and also to go and see the Temples of Angkor Wat.

Arriving in Cambodia

Our first day was pretty chilled - we walked around the town and got to know where the markets were and food places, but also more importantly the famous "Pub Street" where the party at New Year would be.  Unfortunately the food was way more expensive on this street than anywhere else (of course) but the beer is pretty much always either 50cents (US) or 75cents!  That's right, 30p for a glass of draught beer!!  

After we'd had a beer (ahem) we went to get some food and noticed this little restaurant was doing 3 courses for $4 - bargain!  I had a really tasty curry called an Amok, which is a Cambodian national dish, and Tone had a normal Cambodian Curry.  But mine was way better, purely for the fact that it came served IN A COCONUT! 

Also, Cambodians are super-friendly, and everywhere you go they want to get you to buy something!  You constantly here the shouts of "laydeee, siirr, you wanna massage laydeee??" Or something like that...they like their massages in SE Asia...

Amok Curry in a Coconut!

Also great here are the Tuk Tuks - they are basically just small carriages somehow attached to the back of mopeds.  Some of them are pimped out quite nicely, others are more basic (but obviously still do the job..)  The guy who owns the one below has clearly got a thing for Batman.

A Cambodian Tuk Tuk - basically a carriage attached to a moped!

I did see about 9 people (Cambodians) go past in a TukTuk outside the hostel once, I think a couple of them were kids but still, it's a pretty tight squeeze in there.  I think we managed to get in with 4 other people and it was a bit hairy, especially on the bumpy roads!  Also people drive all over the place here, just like in Thailand, so you can get pretty close to the moped/bike/truck in front of you.

Aside from the normal massage places that are in abundance in the centre of Siem Reap, are the "Fish Massage"places that are everywhere - including in bars and markets!  Basically, it's a tank of fish that you put your feet into, and then they "massage"your feet by nibbling away all the dead skin.  It's less massage and more "tickles" - I couldn't actually keep my feet in for more than 10 seconds at first, and you get a 20 minute go!  It's almost like torture!  Still, you get a free beer with it so all in all it was a pleasant, if odd way to spend 20 minutes of our day.

Tony and Me getting our Fish Massage

Fish nibbling at my feet

Angkor Wat

On the 30th and 31st December we went to see the temples of Angkor Wat.  The first day we hired a Tuk Tuk, with our driver Niel, to take us to the furthest away temples and on the second day we hired a bike to cycle round the closest and most famous temples.  What both of us didn't realise is just how spread out these temples are - they are in area about 10km x 15km - so there are a lot of temples.  I think we barely scrached the surface of what there was to see.  It was cool getting a tuk tuk on the first day, as you can sit back and enjoy the view in (relative) comfort. 

Me and our Tuk Tuk driver Niel

The temples were built from the 9th to the 15th Century.  They didn't actually take that long to build, but different temples were built during this time.  There are the most amazing engravings in stone and although most of the temples are in a bit of a state of disrepair, it kind of adds to the magic and wonder of the place. 

Engravings on the walls of one of the Temples

One thing that was slightly hard to deal with was the fact that all throughout the temples thee are small children begging for money, or trying to sell you fruit or postcards - they all come up to you and practice there english on you as well and are so cute!  It's really hard though because it's impossible to attempt to give money to them all.  Thee are also loads of other people selling their wares in the temples, which is slightly off-putting, but hey, we're in Cambodia! 


There are trees growing out of many of the walls and into the temples, which look really bizarre but amazing too.  

A girl sitting in one of the Temple "windows"

Trees growing out of the ruins

An Elephant statue at Pre Rup

On the second day we decided to cycle to the temples and have a bit more of a chilled look around the temple of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom.  It was really nice being able to just cycle around them, although I feared for my life slightly in the Cambodia traffic with no helmet on...

We didn't realise quite how big it was, and it took us about 3 hours to get round most of it, and we were trying to hurry a bit as well because Angkor Thom was even bigger!

There are loads of statues throughout the corridors of Angkor Wat, that are taken care of today by Buddhist monk who live and work in the temples, maintaining it and keeping the grounds clean.  Most of the statues are adorned with flowers, or a bright orange sash and you can make an offering to them by lighting incense. 

Tone on his bike

Man pumping water from a well

Buddha statue in one of the Temples

Some of the carvings and engravings in Angkor Wat are really well kept, and it's unbelievable to think that they've been around since the 12th Century!  Angkor Wat is also unusual as it''s the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious centre since its foundation — first Hindu, dedicated to the god Vishnu, then Buddhist. It is the world's largest religious building!  

Engravings of Apsaras

Probably the most famous features of Angkor Wat is the huge bas-reliefs found running along the 4 walls of the outer wall of the temple.  They are hugely detailed wall carvings that depict various religious symbols - mostly Hindu.  

Bas Relief on the side of Angkor Wat

We went on to Angkor Thom to see some of the temples there, but decided we'd go back to Angkor Wat for the sunset (us and about a million other people!) .  You're "meant to"see sunrise and sunset at Angkor Wat to see it's true beauty, but we were quite happy with just seeing the sunset, which was really beautiful.

Angkor Wat at sunset

So after our jaunt around the temples we got back and got ready for New Years Eve.  We heard that there was a street party going on in Pub St, but we wern't sure whether there would be many people there...how wrong we were!  We got there at around 10pm and it was rammed!  There was the same music playing in all the bars and on the street, and everyone seemed to be drinking some kind of bucket drink.  The drink of choice I think was a "whiskey bucket" which had in it half a bottle of Mekong whiskey, coke, red bull and lime!  Potent and cheap ($5!).  As you can imagine we didn't do much the next day, other then nurse our sore heads...

The Cooking Course

One thing that I was really keen to do whilst in Cambodia or Thailand was learn to cook some native food.  It was pretty cheap to do it in Siem Reap, only $10, and we got to cook 3 courses and then eat them all!  I learnt how to cook an Amok (one of my favourite dishes here) and fresh Spring Rolls, plus a banana/coconut/tapioca pudding.  Tone cooked a Cambodian curry, freid Spring Rolls and a similar pudding to mine but with pumpkin instead of banana.

Us before the cooking began

We got to make the spice paste from scratch, which took ages!  And learnt that Cambodians put a lot of sugar into their dishes!  Both of ours had about 3 spoons of palm sugar and 2 of white sugar.  They were a bit sweet at the end actually, but I guess that's how they're meant to be.  

Tony chopping his onions

When we finally started cooking, it was about 50 degrees in the room.  There was no aircon as it was an open air sort of place.  One thing which was a slight pity was the fact that there were too many of us for the cooking stations, so you had to share a pan with someone else.  Actually, for some reason or another I didn't actually have to share mine once, but Tone did and was slightly disappointed.  

Cooking the Amok

Eating the Amok

Curry and Spring Roll induced food coma

It was really satisfying eating at the end, although we were so full by the end of it we could hardly move!  Definitely hope we can recreate these back home, and hopefully we can find most of the ingredients in the Vietnamese/Asian supermarkets.  There were only a couple of spices which I thought we'd have a hard time finding.

So, we're in Sihanoukville at the moment - on Cambodia's coast.  We're trying to spend the rest of our time out here on a beach, before going back to the cold on the 24th.  This is our penultimate stop - the last one will be Koh Phangan in Thailand for the Full Moon party and then it's home time!  Crazy!

xx

PS there is a man in front of me who is coughing his guts up every 2 minutes, and when he does he sounds like he's about to puke and it's making me feel a little more than queasy...it's proper minging.  So sorry if this post seems a little short on words/descriptions...

Nuggets from the Northern Hemisphere.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Hello everyone, hope you had a brilliant Christmas and you're looking forward to New Year. It was a bit of a funny one for us, we spent Christmas in Phuket, Thailand which couldn't have been more different from what we had originally planned, but once we embraced it for what it was we actually had a pretty awesome time - apart from missing everyone in the UK of course, and the many Christmas dinners we usually get to tuck in to. As the title of this post suggests, we are actually north of the equator now and will remain there for the foreseeable future. We've gone from taking life veeerrry sloooowwwwly in the van to traveling very quickly again, which has come as a bit of a shock. I started to say to Fia that I was getting a bit tired of the chaos, but actually we've just arrived in Cambodia and I'm feeling the excitement again. I just saw a man ride past on a moped one-handed, carrying a dozen live ducks upside down, tethered at the feet, alive and quacking(!) - the way someone might carry some dead ducks in Europe. Surely they should be dead before you string them up like that?

I guess you had to be there really...

In any case I think Cambodia has a lot of the weird and wonderful for us to see, eat, and experience, but we'll save these details for the next post. There are signs in the hostel advertising a 'fish massage', I'll let you imagine what that involves for now.

We left New Zealand on 18th December and now in Cambodia, this is the fourth country we've visited since then. First off was a brief stint in Australia. We only had three nights there so we stayed with Andy Harrison (some of you may know him) in Bondi, Sydney. I won't pretend we didn't spend the majority of the time drinking beer, however we did get to see the harbour and city centre as well as Bondi Beach and The Cross. Surprisingly we both left Sydney feeling as if we could quite happily live there for a few years, it's a bit like London but really close to some amazing beaches and just seems to have a really friendly, summery vibe about it, although we didn't meet any Australians! Everyone was either a Kiwi or from nothern England. It was pretty expensive to visit and beer was about 5 pounds for a scooner - about 400ml - criminal! The harbour bridge and opera house were every bit as impressive as we expected.

Fia in front of Sydney Harbour Bridge


The Opera House

Me and Andy on his balcony in Bondi

Next on the itinerary was Singapore. I will be honest and say I wasn't really that fussed about going there, but it had it's charms, especially the way the whole city operated. From what we'd read it sounded like the Asian equivalent of Hitler's Germany - it's illegal to chew chewing gum, you could get the death penalty for almost any crime and all types of fun are illegal. This wasn't the case at all, the strict laws seemed to work really well, there was no real litter anywhere, there were very few police about (there didn't need to be either), everyone was friendly and we felt safe the whole time. From what we were told it's a really nice place to live and there's a lot going on, lots of community spirit and all the different races get along well. The people were a mixture of Indians, Malays, Chinese, and just every other nationality that decided to come and live and work there. There were different districts in the city based around the key nationalities, Little India was especially cool - loads of tacky/chic Indian gifts and really nice smelling food everywhere. There were temples and other religious buildings on every street, each seemed to be for different beliefs yet they all got along. There didn't seem to be a huge problem with poverty either. Apparently the tax banding is between 10% and 20% maximum as they don't need to throw huge amounts of money into public services, like litter clearing and huge police forces, and the whole place seems to run very well. with the people pocketing more of their hard earned money, even if it's less than we earn in England.

One of the many temples around Singapore packed with people

A man holding joss-sticks outside a temple

The only rubbish thing about it was the humidity. Singapore is pretty much smack on the equator and they have no real seasons. It was 30 -35 degrees all day, barely cooled at night, and stayed at around 80% humidity - sweaty as! Oh, and a pint of beer in a bar costs about 8 quid, but you can find it cheaper in their Hawker food centres. Hawker food centres are dotted all around the city, it seems everyone eats out in Singapore, understandable when you can get such amazing food, like spicy duck noodles, soup and beansprout salad for as little as a pound. Also on the menu was turtle soup, spine meat soup, meat balls (bollocks of some sort... a'hem...!) soup, brain soup, and good old stomach soup. Yum :os

Another surprising thing was that EVERYONE spoke very good English and they went mental about Christmas. It wasn't anywhere near as hectic as we had imagined either. Even the Germans don't run their cities as efficiently as Singapore.

Gingerbread house decorating competition in one of Singapore's amazingly well air conditioned shopping malls - we spent a lot of time going inside to get out of the humidity. They must make a killing over there.

Marina Bay, south of the city

Singapore again was a bit expensive compared to what we expected from the rest of South East Asia and unfortunately we are starting to run out of funds a bit, so we decided to move on after 3 nights.

We had a marathon journey ahead. We thought we'd just get on a bus and see where we ended up before getting too tired. We ended up travelling by bus all the way to Butterworth, near Penang in Malayisa. Penang sounded a bit like Singapore so we skipped it out. We passed by Kuala Lumpur on our way up but the connecting bus to Butterworth was leaving in a few hours so we kept going. Thinking back on it we perhaps we should've tried to see a bit more of Malaysia but we really wanted to spend Christmas on a beach somewhere and it just didn't seem possible in Malaysia - Thailand it was. We slept for a few hours in Butterworth, woke up and had breakfast in the bus station - an Indian dish called Tosai, a pancake type thing with three curry-like dips - then continued on to Hat Yai and finally Phuket, Thailand. We left Singapore at 7:30am on the 21st and arrived in Phuket about 9pm the next day.

Me and my Tosai

As usual when travelling there's always something waiting to go wrong. The journey up, despite being long and the bus pretty sticky, was actually quite bearable. We'd booked a great looking hostel the day before over the internet (hostelbookers.com) and received our confirmation email so all good. Until we arrived in Phuket! We got to Cheap Charlie's Backpackers, where we'd booked, only to be met by a blank looking guy who said "Oh, shit, it's been so busy I haven't bothered to check my emails and we're full". Great. Fia was basically in tears and somehow we had to find a hostel that wasn't infested with cockroaches and rats, that wasn't already booked up a couple of days before Christmas, and wasn't ridiculously expensive. Luckily Gregg at Cheap Charlies handled it well. He sat us down with a free beer each and then drove us around in search of a comparable place to stay. Somehow we hit the jackpot, a double room just down the road in a place called Sea Blue Backpackers, far enough from the bars to get a decent night sleep but close enough to the action to walk to and from the main strip, and... it had a balcony with a Jacuzzi bath! It only cost us 50p each a night more than the hostel we originally booked so we were quite happy.

First glimpse of the room


Tadaaaaa!

Now, as I mentioned earlier Phuket (more specifically Patong beach area) was not the island paradise we originally planned for. At first it seemed like the Blackpool of Thialand with topless 40 - 50 year old, pot-bellied single guys - grey chest rugs and gold medallions everywhere - with 20 - 30 something pretty Thai girls hanging off their arms (about as cultural as their experience will get), watching football in one of the hundreds of bars that are built next to the beach. Patong beach had a massive McDonalds towering over it and everywhere you looked were sun loungers with these old blokes and their girls (and maybe not in some cases...). After a brief period of despair we realised that we'd only seen one part of the island and decided to hire a moped the next day. From then on it got a lot, lot better. The roads were pretty mental, hundreds of bikes everywhere, most carrying more than 2 passengers, and the law seemed to be - if you're turning into a road it's your responsibility not to crash in to the person coming out of the road, but if you can't be bothered with that rule then it's their responsibility not to crash into you. Basically, ignore the signs, lights and whistle blowing traffic police and pull across three lanes of traffic as quickly as possible (they only have two lanes in most places, but there is in fact an invisible middle lane that's used for weaving in and out of traffic beeping your horn to make it all fine).

Phuket from the road side

We zipped around the island (wearing our helmets - Mum and Dad!), and found some really nice beaches. They were still fairly busy but then it was high season and it was loads better than Patong. The water was crystal clear blue, and the sand was white. It was 35 degrees most days, with a gentle breeze to keep it just below too hot. We were even blessed with some small, clean waves on Christmas eve and Christmas day. Christmas dinner was substituted by a good old Fry up - we went out for a few on Christmas Eve and needed some grease to make us feel better. It was actually surprisingly good - thanks to Stanley's English Pub for that one. We ended up having the staple noodle soup for dinner in the evening. Fia chose chicken, I chose beef because it came with dumplings... or so I thought. As soon as I bit into those one of the two dumplings I realised they had the wrong texture. Surely the had to be something else? I took another bite, it was chewy, very rubbery and tasted like some kind of meat I hadn't eaten before. Yep, you guessed it, they were balls of the testicular variety. I will never be the same again. The worst bit is they definitely weren't cow balls because they were too small. Answers on a postcard please.

On Boxing day we got some really good snorkelling in at the southern cape of Phuket. We saw tonnes of colourful fish swimming amongst the coral, blue starfish, strange crabs and a massive school of squid. Pretty cool way to spend the Christmas period in the end.

Thai longboats


Fia catching a Christmas Eve wave


The coastline south of Patong


Christmas lunch!


Beaching it up on Christmas Day

I'll finish with some pictures of Patong at night to give you an idea of how mental it was. If only all of you guys were there to make it as fun as it could've been. We could've gone to the Ping pong show together, or even the Egg Show... I'll leave that up to your imagination!

Patong at night

"Ladies" of the night... maybe where the balls in my soup came from.

Happy New Year everyone xxx