merry christmas!

hello all and merry christmas to you!

so we made it to mui ne, its sunny (mostly!), and we ve got tinsel- hooray! we're just by the beach and ready for xmas...we can even get some sort of christmas dinner across the road. yum!

we've planned a sledging trip for boxing day too (on the sand dunes!)

anyway, mainly i wanted to wish you a very merry christmas. miss you all, but will see you soon

xxx

hanoi

hanoi was great- a total change from thailand, not least cos it was cold!!!! havent felt that for a while and a bit of a shock to the system. still, actually made it feel much more christmassy and they have loads of trees and decorations which wasn't really happening in thailand. got a lovely guesthouse with a terrace right on the roof. traffic was totally mental- and crossing the road felt like a walk with death everytime. think the best way to deal with it is just to close your eyes and walk and hope for the best. or else you'd be stuck there all day. totally mad indeed. you certainly feel lucky to be alive after each time!

quite mad to see all the communist posters and flags everywhere, went to quite a few museums- all quite interesting, and the temple of literature- an old university with pretty ornamental ponds and things. best was going to see ho chi minh himself. he is embalmed in a dark room, and it feels quite scary going in with all the military presence. they actually made me buy a sarong or they wouldn't let me in as i had rips in my jeans (not out of fashion, i literally cannot get a pair to fit me here. total humiliation everytime i go in and cannot even do the zips up of the largest ones in the shop...). it said on the sign 'free clothing lend', but they refused to acknowledge that existed and made me buy one off them. hmm, nice little earner there. so stylish as well- kind of like a curtain... anyway, it was quite odd seeing him. he definitely looked like he could just sit up at any minute. also went to the water puppet theatre- a traditional vietnamese art, ,which was odd to say the least, but quite funny. glad it only lasted an hour anyway! spent the next few days just enjoying the city, drinking outrageously strong coffee, trying to avoid being taken on a tour of the city by motorbike/cyclo/having photograph taken with fruit baskets over my shoulder whilst wearing a pointy hat- surprisingly difficult to avoid. best option-run.

was fun, but xmas is coming and we want the beach and some heat! so we decided to head south where apparently its hot. we took a 27hr journey on the train which was a lot of fun actually! we had a 4 berth compartment with nice comfy beds and spent the time playing lots of scrabble, and cards. the time passed very well! unfortunately it seems to be raining everywhere in vietnam except hanoi. oh dear- we are now in nha trang and its pouring. never mind, maybe we'll be lucky in mui ne- leaving for there tomorrow! speak soon xx

vietnam...just about!

Had a great few days in Bangkok- bit more chilled this time and didn't try to do all the sights, so more time to just enjoy the city! Went to see Deep Dish on our last night which had the potential to be disastrous as we had to fly out first thing in the morning. And, yes, it nearly did turn out to be like that. We managed to sleep throuigh our alarm clock, even though apparently everyone else in our guest-house had heard iut and was out on the landing complaining. oops. and becky and chris had to wake us up which i had no recollection of. we then got a taxi and were stuck in traffic for over an hour, so by the time we arrived at the airport we'd pretty much resigned ourselves to having missed it- 10 min till the flight left and thousands of peopole around the check-in desk. as a last resort i just yelled at the desk 'HANOI- 10 MIN!' and somehow managed to get their attention. we then had to pay our departure tax, which we just about manage to scrape the money together for, then get through customs where the guy seemed to be going as slow as possible just to stress us out even more ('did you know your visa runs out today?' "yes thats why we have to get on this flight-argh!'. anyway, our nbames were being called on the tannoy and they held the flight for us, but very embarrasing getting on the plane!

crazy town

so we arrived bangkok after a 13 1/2hr bus journey...wasn't actually too bad- managed to get some sleep. after walking up and down the khao san road a few times, we decided against the prison style smelly rooms, and headed up the 'villa' guest house where we stayed the last time. its gorgeous- an old thai style house with big wooden beds and old wood furniture and antique wardrobes and desks.its so nice and airy- the best place and so different!

i had to change my flight (supposed to be flying back to darwin in a few days!) and becky had to pick her bank card from the british embassy, so we took a tuk tuk across the city. it was all great fun until he started driving up all these side roads, and stopped and asked us for some money for petrol. then he said we should go with him to look at t-shirts. unbelievable- would have been fine apart from the fact that the embassy closed in half an hour, for which she needed to show her passport. we needed to give our passports in to get visas for laos and vietnam which takes 4 days- the amount of days we have to leave thailand before our visas to expire.... so we really really didnt have time for t-shirts. we tried to explain that it was very very impotant that we got to the embassy now...'no its closed' arghhh!!!!!! becky said she's phoned up and checked and off he went. just as we started to relax again he turned a corner and pulled up outside a travel agent, and said we could get our visas there for vietnam! we were so mad! we just got out and started walking, but had no idea where we were. when we figured it out, we weren't that far from the embassy, but no driver seemd to be able to understand the meaning of 'one right, and right again' . even thjouough they knew where to go they wouldn't take us to anywhere except a hotel it seemed. it was so so annoying. cant believe we arrived in bangkok and within 6 hrs we were being conned.
by this stage the embassy was shut, so we tried to go and change my ticket. got to the building and they told us it was only open on mondays. when we pointed out it was monday they told us to go ahead. the woman at the desk needed to see id before we could go up, but actually it didnt matter i didnt have any! we went up and sure enough it was closed (but the door was open). we went inside and found out that the ticket office had actually changed buildings anyway. at this stage we thought we'd give up but just decided to check the time in case, we could make it by 4.30....i asked the woman at the front desk, and she told me it was 7.30.... the final nail in the coffin- we decided to go and get a drink. quite an exhausting afternoon!

last night was fun. we ended up at a bar which they had opened in the forecourt of a petrol station (and today it is really a working petrol station!). the bar was actually a van! the first thing the brought us was corn water with a shot of moonshine, with a side dish of unidenifiable v v v salty beans, and white fruit cherry type things? all quite horrible! on the way back becky kept asking all the tuk tuk drivers whether they could bring her to somewhere to buy a suit, or some gems, or a nice set of pearls.... you gotta love this place once you get over how messed up it all is!!!

hello!

underwater fun!

had a good week in phuket, although we were all sick excect becky who seems to have super-immunity. thought it was bird flu, but we all seem to be alive still so maybe an over-reaction! was a bit of a shame tho, because i 'd started my advanced dive course, and had to wait around for a few days to try and clear it before i could finish it. so did a wreck dive, 30m- argh!! saw a massive sea-turtle which was well cool- didnt realise they were so big! also a deep dive which was actually less deep but anyway! then an underwater naturalist dive which was loads of fun- learning all the signs for the different fish and trying to identify stuff. saw some lovely fish and ghost pipe fish which was amazing- they look like this
http://www.edge-of-reef.com/solenostomidi/solenostomidien.htm

on the last day did 2 more dives. wasn't so good, cos was still stuffed up and had real head pains when going down. the guy on the boat gave me some pills to clear it but i ended up feeling like a zombie for the rest of the day! still, we can all dive now which is great! cant wait for us all to go together next time!

free time...

bought a lovely "gucci"(!) watch in Malaysia. lasted about 3 days as i wore it swimming. the last watch i had i bought in new york. i smashed the face after 1 day and lost the whole thing on the second. time-keeping's never been my strong point. hehehe- sorry...

concrete paradise!

arrived in phuket a couple of days ago and its a big shock to the system! neon lights, trashy shops and ladyboys.... certainly not what i expected! the past few weeks have flown by...

we renewed our vusas by just going over to Pulau Langkawi in Malaysia. According to the brochure, its the island of mythical legends and duty-free status! Had a really cool little room right on the beach which was lovely. A few too many hotels and stuff on the island but we hired a car, and found some gorgeous beaches, a waterfall and lots of monkeys!

we came back into thailand and headed over randomly to an island called ko bulon. had a bit of a scary moment when we were out at sea and smoke started coming out from below deck the whole length of the boat. think becky and i were about to jump overboard but luckily the crew seemed to be able to handle it all with a chisel and hammer... anyway, it was a bit of a relief to arrive, looked amazing- like a proper desert island, and we had a bit audience as we were getting off the boat! seems like the kind of place where people come and stay for months on end- defintely a few too many freedom trousers there. unfortunately the weather turned a bit crazy, and we spent a lot of the time in the cafe looking at the rain, and playing spendygams, cards, making coral mobiles and endless 'who am i?' such a nice island tho, huge trees fallen down all along the beach and pure white sand.

from there we took another interesting boat journey on a longtail boat to ko lipe. was a bit of a storm which was quite interesting, but the guys who run them are sea-gypsies-chao ley- and live their whole lives on the water... impressively, we seemed to be surfing the waves the whole way!

ko lipe is amazing- the water is crystal clear and there coral just by the shore. we stayed in multi-coloured little huts on the beach, which were wicked. took a fantastic snorkelling trip- the whole day cost us 2 pounds each! saw lovely purple and pink soft corals- like flowers! one beach was so amazing- you just snorkelled along a rope and there was so much variety and fishies! saw tons of little nemos and all sorts... then we were off to another beach, and the guy went off and caught us some fish. then came back, lit a fire, smoked the fish, and we ate it off leaf plates with our fingers- delicious! marc also managed to sit down right beside a deadly stonefish, which was lucky really- 'beside' was defintely better than 'on'... i also did a dive on lipe which was awesome too. its the best place i ve been to for that sort of thing- you can just see so much all around you- think it was about 20m visilibity- its great!!!

then we went to another couple of islands in the same area which are the national national park. ko adang was very quiet, and we had the coolest tent set up ever- well at least to look at. was a little thatched scaffold, with a proper tent strung up inside. unfortunately the bamboo floor was rock solid and very bumpy, it rained all night and it wasn't waterproof at all! it was stilll really cool tho! the other island was ko turatao, which was very different and beautiful. all craggy rocks and wide open beach. we camped there too. this time in normal dome tents but right on the beach, with great trees for our hammocks! we did a couple of masssive walks there which nearly killed me. this time i escaped from leeches, but becky and marc both got one...only chris has missed out so far!

on one walk, we'd come 12 k along a road to the other side of the island, then walked around an old prison for an hour or so, and by the time we were setting off home it was 4pm. was a terrible prospect- i had blisters, we were all knackered and the road was so hilly....we d got about 4 k along and it was starting to go dark, and suddenly a little bus came and stopped for us. joy! we jumped in and it was full of thai thai teachers who were all so excited by us. they made us sit in between them and asked us loads of questions, and were taking photographs of us! hilarious. then they were telling us to come with them to their home the next day. crazy, but such lovely people. felt like a celebrity! and we got back before dark! such a relief and very funny...

from the quiet and calm beaches of the south, we arrived in phuket- concrete monstrosity. the tsunami hit here really badly, i think, and thousands killed. theres not trace of any of that tho, and the beach is bumper to bumper deck-chairs the whole way along. its like the costa del sol times 20! defintely a major shock to the system, but quite funny really. the others are doing a dive course starting today and i am amusing myself... so i ll go now. hope everyone is well...sawadee ka till next time
xxxx