Jun 2007

On the evening of Monday 14 May we arrived in Bangkok. During our six days there we had a great time sampling the city's nighlife.

Going back to a dorm room was difficult after the lovely rooms we had stayed in during our previous week in Cambodia. However, our hostel did have a fab roof terrace and was also right by a Skytrain station so made getting around during the day very easy.

HI Sukhumvit roof terrace

Our local street kitchens

The shopping in Bangkok is amazing, okay so we could only window shop, but it was still good fun to visit those huge shopping complexes that are all linked by the airconditioned Skytrain so that you can hop from one to another without breaking into a sweat (Bangkok was HOT!).

Our time in Bangkok was made more enjoyable as we were lucky enough to be there at the same time as my stepbrother Sean and his lovely new wife, Clare, who were starting their honeymoon in Bangkok before heading off to Samui. We met the newlyweds in their hotel on Wednesday 16 and set off on what I can only describe as an entertaining evening!

Us with Sean and Clare

Note to self: NEVER get in a cab outside an expensive hotel in Bangkok. Also it might help if you don't pile into the cab outside said expensive hotel stating that you want to go to a ping-pong show. Subtle.

Tuk-Tuk and cab drivers in Bangkok are unbelieveble. We wanted to go to Patpong although our cab driver had other ideas. So we did the tour - his mate's resturant followed by the dodgiest club (and we have been to a few so we know what we are on about here) that I have ever seen. There was no way that we were going in and the mafia that were standing outside trying to usher us in was not going to change our minds. I dread to think what would have happened to us in there.

"Erm that's fine we'll walk from here mate."

Then we stumble across a tuk-tuk. Now let me think, what were the warnings that we had read prior to arriving in Bangkok, 'stay away from tuk-tuks at night.....if he quotes you a price that is too good to be true then it probably is'. It's night and he quotes the unbelievably cheap price of 20 baht to take us to Patpong.....so we all pile in. Well Sean and Clare hadn't been in a tuk-tuk yet and there were 4 of us, what could go wrong?

He took us to a brothel. We didn't go in.

"Again, that's fine we'll walk from here mate."

We headed for the nearest bar for a much needed drink. It was getting stressful trying to see a ping-pong show! Luckily the guys behind the bar were really helpful and told us that we were within walking distance of where we wanted to go.

You are not allowed to take pictures in the bars and clubs in Patpong. It's a good job. The women in the show we did end up seeing were truly hideous. I mean really, really bad. Luckily I have had my rabies and tetanus shots as one of the darts actually landed on my leg. Gavin was using a drinks tray to bat the ping pongs away that were being fired in his direction. Gross.

There were lots of bars that had far more attractive ladies (and ladyboys) however they obviously lacked the lower abdominal muscles of the monsters in the shows and therefore just gyrated on bar tops for customer's entertainment.

All in all a hilarious night out.

The following day, a little hungover, Gav and I headed for the shops for a while, although the novelty wears off when you can't actually buy anything, so we jumped on the skytrain and headed to a nearby public park to chill out for the afternoon. We spotted a huge monitor lizard at the side of the lake munching its way through a turtle. We could hear the beast crunching through the turtles shell. We don't get many of them in Cannon Hill Park in Birmingham let me tell you.

We met up with Sean and Clare that evening and were on a mission to go to a good club. Taxi drivers had other ideas yet again. I'll cut a long story short (what do you mean that's unlike me?). We ended up in a crappy club in the @rse end of nowhere that was full of other idiot tourists such as ourselves that had been brought there by their equally dodgy cab drivers.

I had a massive sulk and decided that I wasn't going to play as it wasn't where I wanted to be and I felt that we shouldn't have given the cab driver the satisfaction of actually paying to go in. Then I realised I was the only one not having a good time (apart from Gav who was trying to get me out of my sulk) so I swallowed my pride and busted some shapes on the dance floor along with everyone else. We hit our beds at around 5am the next morning.

Sean and Clare

The following day we decided to move to a double room in the hostel. It's not much more expensive than two dorm beds and we were getting told off by the young 'uns in the room for coming in so late each night. Surely it should be the other way around?

FA Cup Final day, Saturday 19 May. We started our day with a webcam chat with the Curley family. Gav's parents were in the UK for his Nephew's Holy Communion so it was a great opportunity to get everyone together for a catchup.

For the football we headed for a British style pub that had Guinness on tap and a large screen showing the match - Gav was a happy man. Whilst in there we met a lovely couple, Steven and Fiona, from Sydney. We ended up going out clubbing again to a great place called Bed Supperclub. It was hillarious that the doormen made Steven run to the local supermarket to buy a pair of socks to put on with his flip flops before they would let us in. Girls can wear flip-flops but men cannot...'dems da rules' but boys wearing socks with flip flops makes it okay? We'll let you judge....

Steven & Fiona

Bed Supperclub

After the club, typical us wanted to carry the night on and went on a mission to find somewhere that was still open. We did find an afterclub but as the entrace fee was steep and people were buying shorts by the bottle rather than individual drinks.....we gave it a miss.

CHIANG MAI

Why oh why did we go clubbing the night before travelling? Hungover and tired we arrived in Chiang Mai airport on Sunday 20th May and jumped in a cab to a guest house we had read about called Julie Guesthouse.

Now lets get something straight. Yes we are backpacking and we can slum it with the best of them but this guest house, no way siree. It was not happening. We spent our first day in Chaing Mai looking for somewhere else to stay. We did have to spend one night at Julie Guesthouse - we didn't sleep at all. (Shudder).

The following day we moved to Jonadda Guesthouse and spent the day mooching around Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai has a really laid back, almost hippy feel to it, entirely different to Bangkok.

Sunday Market

It turns out that one of the guys we met in Hanoi, New York Greg, was also staying at Jonadda and we bumped into each other that evening. It was great to catch up and chat about what we had all been up to duiring the last month.

In Chiang Mai they seemed to be obsesed with Bob Marley and reggae in general. It must be a ganja thing. Anyway, we ended up in a reggae bar for dinner that had a Thai band singing Bob Marley songs. Hilarious!

Chiang Mai is great for outdoor activities and the next day we decided to hire moutain bikes to explore the city. Gavin said he has never ever seen me sweat so much in all the years we have been together - well it was very hot! I didn't make things easy for myself either. Not content with riding around on the lovely flat roads in the city, I decided that we should try to cycle up the Doi Suthep Mountain. We didn't even make it to the foot of the mountain before I admitted defeat.

Help me!

That evening we met New York Greg for a few drinks in a bar near to our hostel. It was difficult to sit on those wooden chairs after riding that bike all day. Ouch!

By hook or by crook we were going up that mountain so on Thursday 24 May we hired a moped. At times we didn't think the little moped would make it with both of us on but we got there and were rewarded with some great views of Chiang Mai.

C.H.I.P.S.

Views from the mountain

On the way back down we decided to stop at the entrance to a National Park for a gentle stroll to find the waterfall. An hour of serious trekking later (in flip flops) we found a trickle of water pretending to be a waterfall. Ah lovely, an hour trek back then.

Gav was eager to do an organised mountain biking tour, I of course was not. On the Friday Gav set off on his mountain bike day whilst I had a day long Thai cookery course. Both of us had a great time (and it probably did us good to have a day apart after 2 months of travelling together!).

I had a tour around the local market as part of my cooking course.....bacon buttie anyone?

Gav had arranged for us to meet a couple of the guys from his mountain bike tour for drinks that evening. An evening of drinking games followed, as did another 5am finish.

Drinking games

We (Gav) decided that we were booking onto a three day jungle trek. I personally would have opted for the safer two day trek but was up for the challenge (Gav knows how much I love walking). It's something that we have both been really looking forward to and on Monday 28th we set off on our mini adventure into the Northwest Mae Teang area of Chiang Mai.

Day one of the trek started very easily with an hour or so in a pickup truck to a market for supplies followed by lunch in a riverside hut. Then came the difficult bit. Now, I knew it was going to be a trek although for some reason I didn't think it would be 3 hours of uphill hiking. I started off at a great pace but 3 hours later I thought I was going to die. By the grace of God there was a couple who were struggling more than I and we had to stop every now and then to wait for them to catch us up which gave me a sneaky opportunity to catch my breath!

Ray Mears and Nora Croft

The night was spent with the Lahu Tribe, under mosquito nets in a communal hut. Before hitting our sacks we sat around a fire with our guide. Firstly the hill tribe children came and performed for us, singing sweet little songs and dancing. Even the tiniest children were involved. Then we had to sing for them, very embarassing. We then played a few games (sort of drinking games but without the drink) with the loser having soot from the bottom of a cooking pot smeared on their face. Guess who was the overall loser?

Loser!

Our fellow trekkers

The children's performance

Sleeping in a bamboo hut with 10 other people is near on impossible. Every time one person moves the whole hut moves and any sound echoes through the bamboo. Also it seem that each village must have a million (okay that's a slight exaggeration) cockerels. The purpose of the cockerels is simply to cock-a-doodle-doo from about 4am in order to wake up anyone who may have managed to snatch a few minutes sleep in a communal hut.

On day two of the trek our group was reduced to 7 as some people had opted for the sensible two day option. A 1 1/2 hour trek in the morning, a swim in a waterfall, lunch in a pig sty (well not exactly, but not far off) and finally a 3 hour trek in the afternoon. Although we trekked for longer, it was a lot easier than day one as there was less uphill hiking. We followed the river so there was lots of scrambling over rocks and wading through the water which was really good fun.

Our bed for the second evening was also a communal bamboo hut in a beautiful setting. It was completely open fronted overlooking the river. In the evening we were able to sit and watch thousands of fire flies in the trees opposite. It was gorgeous. By 9pm we were all in bed, absolutely exhausted.

Day three consisted of elephant trekking, white water rafting and bamboo rafting. The white water rafting was the best activity, we had great fun throwing ourselves into the rapids as fast as we could. We both thought we would enjoy the elephant trekking but we actually just came away feeling very sorry for them.

The hardcore three day group

And so it was time to move on again. On Thursday 31 May we flew from Chaing Mai Airport to Koh Samui and then jumped on a ferry to our first Island desination, Koh Pha Ngan.

THE ISLANDS

We met a group of South Africans on the ferry who were all on holiday for a 40th birthday celebration. I stayed with the group and our bags in Thong Sala whilst Gav nipped off on a moped to find us somewhere to stay. By the time he got back 3 hours later a number of beers had been consumed and it's fair to say I was a little tipsy. Our first night we stayed in a room that Gav had found that actually had a bath tub...bliss. However, as it was quite pricey (by our backpacker standards), the following night we decided to join the South African group at a place called Boom Cafe which was just 5 minutes away.

Views from Boom Cafe

Our host, Nok, and our South African friends

Friday 1st June was a full moon and so we along with the group of South Africans headed to Haad Rin for the famous Full Moon Party.

I think to really enjoy the Full Moon Party you need to be there during high season when the larger crowds would create a better atmosphere. We thought that the music was great but there were lots of young kids in awful states (yep, worse than us). You know, sort of 'Ibiza Uncovered' style where they have drunk and drugged themsleves to the brink of hospitalisation. There was a 'casualty' tent where the real bad cases were dumped and left on the ground until the effects wore off. Also, I couldn't get over how many blokes were using the beach as a toilet. Just stood there in full view, urinating on the beach. Obviously we are getting too old for this lark. The group of South Africans, who are all at least 10 years our senior I might add, put us to shame. Gav and I sneaked off at about 4am, they didn't roll in until 10am the next morning!

On Saturday 2nd, feeling holier than thou as we were up with the birds with no hangovers (unlike our South African freinds) we decided to go out on the moped to explore the island and decide where to move on to next. We first popped back to Haad Rin, it looked awful after the party, we definitely would not be staying there. We then went to Haad Salad and Chaloklam before having to turn back as our little moped couldn't make the steep dirt tracks with both of us on.

Haad Salad

Views of Kho Pha Ngan

We decided that Hat Thong Nai Pan on the North East of the island was where we wanted top go next and on Sunday 3rd I jumped in a pickup with the bags and Gav followed on the moped.

Thai style taxi and ice-cream van

We headed straight for Dolphin Bungalows which was in a glorious setting, you simply could not get more chilled, but our bungalow had the hardest mattress imaginable and the mozzies were eating us alive. We stayed there for two nights before moving on to a gorgeous little beach side bungalow which was only 300 baht a night. We honestly could have stayed there for weeks. The beach was perfect with powdery white sand, the weather was perfect, the sea was bath water warm and great for swimming in and there were little local restaurants serving great Thai food for next to nothing within walking distance. It was peaceful, chilled and we met some really cool people there. Have you ever been somewhere that you are so taken with that you don't have to do anything, you can just sit back and relax? This was one of those places for us.

Hat Thong Nai Pan

Okay so the downside, our gorgeous beachside bungalow had bed bugs. At first we thought it was mosquitoes, or maybe sand flies.....no, it was bed bugs. The room had twin beds so Gav and I slept seperately, he luckily didn't get a single bite whilst I was covered from head to toe. My God, they itch.

View from our bungalow

Our little friend

Maybe it was for the best as we probably would never have moved from there otherwise! You would have heard from us in a few years time. We would be earning money by working as a Bob Marley tribute band (Gav would be Bob) and sleeping on the beach with the stray dogs.

Our last night in Hat Thong Nai Pan

Reluctantly we headed back to Thong Sala to jump on a catamaran to Koh Toa. The main thing we were heading to Koh Toa for was the diving. It has great dive sites with reef sharks and whale sharks often sighted. We headed straight for Ban's Diving Resort on Sairee Beach. Our room was fairly basic, a bed, a fan and no hot water but we are well used to that by now and we did have use of a lovely pool. The beach didn't seem to be as nice as where we had come from but that was no problem as we had come for the diving rather than the beach.

Our hotel pool

Catastrophe! I'd picked up an ear infection and couldn't go diving. Cue a little sob. I insisted that Gav still went for his dive as there was no point in us both missing out (oh I'm such a brave little soldier). I sat in our room feeling very sorry for myself with my antibiotics and ibruprofen whilst Gav went off on his two dives and guess what...he only went and saw a shark! It was a Grey Reef Shark and around 2 metres in length. I was gutted to have missed out.

Talking of sobbing, I didn't mention that I have broken my little toe did I? It's now slightly deformed but no longer painful. I basically kicked a brick wall (accidentially) and knew immediately it was broken - toes are not supposed to bend in that direction. You know the sort of pain that takes your breath away and it feels like your heart stops beating for a couple of seconds? Well that's what it was like. I didn't cry at the time, however, I did cry a couple of days later when I skidded on a wet floor in my flip-flops and bashed the bugger again. Gav laughed. He said it looked like I was ice-skating. I did laugh a little too but tears were falling at the same time.

On Friday 15th we jumped on a Catamaran to Koh Samui. We are staying in the Chaweng Beach area in a little bungalow just off the main strip. I have to say we've been living a little like hermits since we arrived. There are plenty of great bars and restaurants but it all seems to be a little out of our price range and other than eating and drinking there seems to be little else to do (what do you mean that's all we do anyway?). We are missing our little beach on Koh Pha Ngan!

We will probably spend a couple more days here catching up on 'admin' before heading on to Malaysia by train where we are hoping to spend the best part of a month. Gav will take over for the next update. Until then here are a couple of extra piccies to keep you entertained. Now why did we call our blog Afros and Sunburn........?

Gav take that vest off!

Oh Dear God, it's a GHD emergency!

This is my first attempt to update the blog and give Cardie a break. Let’s hope that the standard will be as good and who knows it may be a while before I let Cardie back on.

When we planned our trip, Cambodia was somewhere that we both overlooked. However, as we travelled through Vietnam virtually every other traveller we spoke to asked “Why aren’t you going to Cambodia?” So we did some research and decided that we had enough time to make a small detour.

Our journey into Cambodia was by bus from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. It is a relatively short trip with the border crossing only 2 1/2 hours away. The cost for a Cambodian Visa is $20 per person. We paid an additional $4 ‘admin’ charge to the guy on our bus in order for him to take our passports and organise our visas for us. Obviously this $4 was going directly into his pocket but as it meant we passed through border control hassle free it was absolutely fine by us!

To reach the capital, Phnom Penh, it was another 3 hours or so from the border and included a ferry aross the Mekong River. There were street kids on board the ferry selling everything from water to fruit. I’ve learnt that I’m too soft with kids and cannot even look at them without being parted from my money so I stayed within the safety of the bus.

Along the highway into Phnom Penh we passed a number of villages and traditional stilt houses where the kids would wave at us, full of smiles, as the bus passed. It had been raining and the lots of the children were playing in the huge muddy puddles that had appeared along the roadside.

Arriving into Phnom Penh was chaotic, as soon we got off the bus we were being pulled from one direction to the other and were bombarded with “tuk-tuk Sir?” “I take you to your hotel”. We were both trying to keep an eye on our backpacks and it all felt quite overwhelming. We had no accommodation booked and therefore had no destination in mind. There are no taxis in Phnom Penh so we took a tuk-tuk, or to give it its proper name a remorque moto.

The driver dropped us off at a café on the riverfront and from there Cardie set off in the heat to find us somewhere to stay. We ended up at a small hotel called the Boddhi Tree Aram, located in a little residential street behind the British Consulate.

Phnom Penh

8 May 2007 Cardie’s birthday

The room was the best of our trip so far and we both had a great nights sleep. We woke up as fresh as daisies and as it was Cardie’s birthday I had asked housekeeping if they could arrange a bunch of flowers. The housekeeper went to the flower market that morning and brought to our room a beautiful bunch of lilies.

Being the big spender that I am(!) and Cardie loving to shop, I took her to the Russian Market. We had read that as a lot of clothes are manufactured in Cambodia ‘surplus stock’ often finds it way to the market. There were plenty of 'designer' brands but unfortunately they were really bad copies. We set off for the other main market in Phnom Penh, The Central Market. Again, the clothes were mainly fakes but we did buy Cardie some trousers - this was probably the cheapest birthday I’ve known in our seven years! On the evening we went to The FCC for dinner and splurged on a bottle of wine.

Birthday Girl at The FCC

9 May 2007

Cambodia has suffered from the effects of many wars but one of the most destructive and harrowing periods was when The Khmer Rouge took control of Government. Under the leadership of Pol Pot, The Khmer Rouge systematically rounded up and executed anyone they believed opposed them, over 2 million people in all. The Khmer Rouge took over Tuol Svay Prey High School in 1975 and turned it into the main prison and torture centre in the country, it was known as Security Prison 21. The former prison is now a museum highlighting the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. We spent the morning visiting the museum and it was extremely disturbing to see the place where so many people had been tortured and suffered.

Rules for Prisoners

Within the grounds are the graves of 14 people whose bodies were found when the city of Phnom Penh was liberated by the Vietnamese. The haunting pictures of the many victims fill several rooms and the tools used to torture the people are left as a reminder of the brutality that occurred. All in all a very sad place.

From S21 prison the prisoners were taken to The Killing Fields at Choeung Ek. It was here that the Khmer Rouge executed over 17,000 people, women and children included. Some of the mass graves have been exhumed and the remains of the victims reburied. A memorial to the 2 million people killed by the Khmer Rouge has been built at Choeung Ek and houses the skulls of some 8000 people.

Skulls in the Memorial

The experience of visiting both the museum and The Killing Fields had a very sombre effect on us both and we returned to Phnom Penh reflecting on what we had seen.

As a result of war 4 - 6 million unexploded landmines remain in Cambodia and it now has one of the highest number of amputees in the world. It was very distressing to see people begging in the streets with servere injuries as a result of landmines.

Our tuk-tuk driver also took us to Wat Phnom, the site of the first pagoda in Phnom Penh. It is here that many people still come to pray for good luck and success in all aspects of daily life.

Wat Phnom

That evening we had a wonderful meal at a restaurant called Friends which is an organisation set up to help and train disadvantaged and street kids in the catering and tourism industry. I managed to leave our bag with $300 in it at the restaurant. Luckily, as we were walking down the road one of the kids came running after us with the bag....phew, that could have been an expensive meal!

The architecture of Cambodia is very striking and we were both blown away by the Royal Palace and National Museum which we visited on Thursday 10th May. The National Museum houses the largest collection of Khmer sculpture although it was the building itself that we where most impressed by.

The National Museum

After lunch we made our way to The Royal Palace, unfortunately as soon as we had paid our entrance fee the heavens opened. A huge thunder storm meant we had to spend the next half hour standing in a door way for shelter. When we thought it had eased off we made a dash for it and ran across the courtyard and a massive bolt of lightning came crashing down beside us. Very dramatic and quite scary!

We thought the Palace was amazing and we spent several hours there. The Silver Pagoda, so called because of it's 5000 silver floor tiles, was very impressive. It houses a huge collection of Buddhas made from many precious metals and gemstones. The centrepiece is the lifesize gold Buddha weighing 90kgs and containing 9584 diamonds the biggest being 25 carats. Very bling. Unfortunately, no photos are allowed inside the Palace buildings so you'll have to take my word for it.

Children selling water outside the Royal Palace

Leaving Phnom Penh

After 4 days in Phnom Penh we left to take the 6 hour bus journey to Siem Reap. We had a guide on the bus who pointed out interesting sights along the way and the journey passed quickly.

On arrival at Siem Reap we were met by our tuk-tuk driver for the next 3 days, Mr Sokha.

Mr Sokha

The main tourist attraction when visiting Siem Reap has to be the temple complexes in the area of Angkor. On Friday 11th May we set off for a mammoth day of temple sight-seeing. Mr Sokha took us firstly to Angkor Wat - the ultimate example of Khmer architecture and the largest religious building in the world.

Angkor Wat

At its height the Khmer Empire stretched from Burma to South Vietnam and into parts of Northern Thailand, the hundreds of temples still standing are a small remainder of what once was. The earliest dating form the year 802.

Bayon

Ta Prohm (part of 'Tomb Raider' was filmed here)

Us at Phnom Bakheng

After a whole day of visiting the spectacular temples we headed back to the hotel with Mr Sokha for a chat and a beer (or two). He along with many of the other tuk-tuk drivers has served in the army. He told told us about the hardships he had faced during his time as a government soldier and a great story about fighting off a gang of monkeys in the jungle for 8 hours as they were trying to steal his limited food supply. He also told us it was okay for Cambodian men to have more than one wife and having extra girlfriends was perfectly acceptable. I told him I thought one was more than enough. He explained that with your extra girlfriends "you can make funny, have jokes, dance and touching is allowed but no honeymoon". We got the gist of what he was saying!

Mr Sokha took us to the floating village on Tonle Sap Lake the following day. The floating village is made up of wooden boathouses and shops selling everything from large car type batteries to groceries. We stopped at one shop which doubled up as a crocodile farm...bizarre!

Children selling fruit on Tonle Sap Lake

Mr Sokha explained that the people living on the lake use the water for all aspects of daily life, cooking, washing, as a childrens play area and as the communal toilet. He told us that the water was filthy and there there was a lot of disease as a result. We have since learnt that 1 in 7 children under the age of 5 years old, dies in Cambodia as a result of dirty water.

After our boat trip on the lake we stopped at a nearby village. Some of the children came out of the houses and asked for money. Rather than hand them cash, I took them to the shop and brought them bags of sweets to share. They were delighted and were squealing with excitment as they tore into the bags of sweets.

I'm not sure that I could say that I enjoyed our time in Cambodia as such, as it was hard to see so many people living in such poverty. The attack on our senses was challenging - the barrage of sights, sounds...and smells made Cambodia, at times, quite difficult. However, we met some of the most friendly, genuine people of our trip so far and seeing the temples of Angkor were amazing.

They eat bugs in Cambodia!

Leaving Cambodia