Michelle and Brent

Tuesday March 4, 6pm
We are back in Bangkok for the day. After Gibbons in Northern Laos, we took a plane to the capital Vientiane, in the south. Our flight was early on Saturday morning and being told to arrive 2.5 hour before the flight took off, we were able to catch the sun rise that morning. We arrived in Vientiane mid morning, as the flight was only 45mins, got ourselves a guesthouse and set about exploring the city.
The next day we did some mojor sight seeing on foot and pubilc transportation, which really takes it out of you. We saw the Laos version of the Arc de Triomphe, a morning market and then took the bus to Buddha Park. Buddha Park is on the banks of the Mekong river about 27 very rough km outside of the city (non-paved roads). We watched a local soccer game while we were there.
The following day we caught a bus back into Thailand. Our first plan was to stay over night in Nong Kai, the city across the river from Laos, but checking the train schedule, and not wanting to take an 11 hour bus ride we hopped on a train that evening, last night. We slept on the train and it arrived as before at 7am in Bangkok. So far today we have wandered the city, after having checked our bags at the train station. This morning Brent played in a local pickup game of soccer and we saw No Country for Old Men.
This evening is our flight to India. 2:40am we leave set to arrive at the break of day again around 6:30am.
We are both anticipating a new part of the world with excitment and nervousness.
Our next post will be from India.
Bye, Michelle

Tuesday February 19, 2008 3pm
We are still here in Bangkok, but not for much longer.
We leave tonight on the night train to Chang Mai, which is exciting for us as we are getting a little tired of this city, specifically our filthy street. It is always full of travellers, hawkers, food stalls, and garbage (quite smelly).
We have made some progress on the planning of the rest of our trip. Today we paid the deposit for the Gibbons Experience, which was nothing compared to the money we just spent on our plane tickets to India! We are leaving on March 5th from Bangkok at 2:40am, and arriving in New Delhi sometime around 7am. Great news. No need for a guest house/hostel that night, as the airport will serve just fine! The cost of this plane ride does not really break the bank, however it just seems like a lot compared to what we have been spending in this very inexpensive part of the world.
We sent home a package yesterday after spending the weekend shopping our brains out at the market. From the approximately 15,000 stalls, while weaving through hoards of people, I managed to buy 6 t-shirts (for about $25-30 total) and Michelle got a bag, a dress, a pair of shorts and a couple shirts. Along with some of the purchases, we also sent home some things we were not using very much, but did not want to throw out (or give away/leave behind).

Our train leaves tonight at 10, so we are just trying to kill some time.

We will keep you all posted.

Brent

Sunday February 17, 1 pm.
Hello to everyone from Bangkok.
We made it to Bangkok from Koh Tao by ferry and train 3 days ago. The ferry was pleasant, but very cold because we stayed in the air conditioned cabin most of the time. They were showing the movie War, but it was hard to understand as the subtitles were very off and the volume quite low. We have decovered that chain smokers takeover the outside decks of all the ferrys and we laugh at ourselves because were are some of the only non-chain smoking travellers, and because we are Canadian and spoilled with all our non-smoking spaces in Canada, we believe that we have the right to breathe fresh air. The cabins are non-smoking and so we stayed in there most of the time.
When we reached Chumpon, the port city on the mainland, we had 6 hours to kill before our overnight train. We wandered the streets of an busy night market, sampled some foods and hung around. We met 2 guys, one from Laurier who had graduated in June and was spending the year in China studying Chinese. He was a great help when we arrived in Bangkok and showed us to a nice hostel called Mom's guesthouse on Kho San road.
The train ride was quite pleasent, we didnt have a sleeper cabin, but we boarded at 11:30 and arrived at 6am so the few hours sleeping in seats was OK. We are going to get a sleeper cabin for our train trip to Chang Mai, northern Thailand, in the next day or 2.
Our check-in wasnt until noon the day we arrived in Bangkok, so we left our bags in the hostel and parked ourselves in a cafe with the two guys we had meet and watched the city come to life. We spent the rest of the day wandering around, exploring and napping. That afternoon we took a tuk tuk. Big mistake. He took us to some fancy jewllery store and tailor-shop, and they basically told use to leave because they could tell we were not seriously considering buying anything. our driver took us there because he gets free gas from the owners of the shops for bringing tourists in that will spend money. since we didn't, he got mad and took us back to where he had picked us up. I refused to pay him because we didn't go anywhere, and he was not pleased, but it worked out in the end, we got a free trip aroubnd town a little, but still, it was all very perplexing.
Yesterday we did some major shopping. We caught a river boat from Banglampu, the area our guest house is in to the Central Station. We the hopped on the sky train and our first stop was Siam Square, and major fancy shopping complex. We then went to the electronic mall, Pantip Plaza, in the hopes of getting a mini DVD player, but didnt love the prices, so are still thinking about that purchase. We hopped back on the sky train and made our way to the weekend market, one of the craziest places we have experienced so far. You can find absolutly anything you could thnk of buying at the massive market. Once inside, if took us a long time to figue out how to get out. There was everything from puppies, to clothing, shoes, food, furniture, all things useful and useless. Crazy! After some exciting purchases, tshirts for Brent, a bag and dress for me we went back to Siam Square , had dinner and went to see American Gangster.
Both are stomachs are up and down these days, but I am taking it easier on the food tasting right now, and feeling better already.
Hope all is well at home.
Michelle

Tuesday February 12, 2008. 8:30pm

So we are here in beautiful Koh Tao right now, which is one of the premier dive sites in the world. It is a small island on the east coast of Thailand where there are barely any inhabitants of local people, and the ones that do live here are all running the tourism. However, unlike Phi Phi on the other side, things here are still very reasonably priced, and it is not a wild and crazy frat party. It is pretty nice and calm, small beaches, nice views and again, hot sun. We arrived here yesterday and found a small bungalow that we are now calling home for the price of 350 baht per night (about 9 dollars). It is one of the nicer rooms we have had so far and we are enjoying it thoroughly. Tomorrow we are heading out on a full day trip around the island that will include a lot of snorkelling, since we are not qualified divers. Tonight, after we finish writing this, we will be heading to the Muai Thai Boxing Arena for a good ol' fashioned blood bath. There are 8 fights scheduled for tonight, and Michelle and I have been excited to see one for quite some time. Hopefully tomorrow night we will get a chance to watch the spectacular Cabaret that they have here on the island featuring exclusively Ladyboys...for those you unfamiliar with that term, it is a man-woman (men who live their lives as women, quite prevalent here in Thailand). Last night we watched Ratatouille at the restaurant we went to after my meal never came to me at the first one. It all worked out well in the end, because the movie was great!

Before coming to this island, we were in Ko Pha Ngan for a few days. We rented motorbikes (with helmets don't worry) and cruised around the island. We played on the beach, swung in the hammock out front of our bungalow, and enjoyed some BBQ'd seafood while sitting right on the sandy beach. It was extremely nice, relaxing and very cheap. That particular island is home to the infamous full moon parties, however we will not be around too enjoy it this month, but we may consider trying to make it to another one. The ferry boats we have taken from Surath Thani and Ko Pha Ngan have been loads better than the other ones. However the bus from Phuket was unbearably long, hot, and crowded. There were people standing in the isles for hours because the bus picked everyone up, and despite being a coach bus, there were 3 and 4 to a seat in some cases, and as I said, people standing. Then we had to take a tuk-tuk (type of cab) to the port, which was an hour away from where the bus dropped us. During that ride, which we shared with three british chain-smokers, our drunk driving chauffeur was rifling through Michelle's pack, as well as one of the Brit's in the front seat. Luckily she had taken everything of value out of that one, and is a good packer, so he could not find much, other than a few pairs of underwear and a flashlight. He then had the nerve to ask us for a tip at the end.
Needless to say that put a sour taste in our mouths, but travel up to and since then has been relatively alright, so we are just taking it as a bump in the road.

From here we will be ferrying over to Chumpon in a couple days, then up to Bangkok via a night train or bus, depending on times, costs and availability.

Until the next,

Brent

PS: I found a gym here on Koh Tao and worked out for real today which was quite lovely. Pushups and stretch band work can only be so exciting.

Thursday February 7, 7pm
Well we have been on the island of Phuket for the last 5 days. It has been really nice to travel and explore the island but return to a home base in the evenings. We have also gotten to know a few of the people staying in the hostel quite well. Phuket is on the west coast of Thailand, a popular tourist place with big beautiful beaches and turquoise waters.
We have travelled around the Island by city bus, the traffic is too crazy for us to rent a motor bike here. The island is quite big and takes about 45 minutes for us to get to the beach. We are staying closer to the east side of the island in Phuket town at a great hostel called Old Town Hostel. The two ladies who run the place are very kind and friendly. The other night we went out to a Thai bar with a live band of 8 people with a few friends and a crazy Thai guy staying at the hostel with dreads way past his bum.
We have tried out a different beach most every day and went to the aquarium on Tuesday. There were some amazing fish and some grouper that were honestly bigger than Brent. There was also a tsunami exibit as the west coast of the island was hit here, but there is mininmal visual damage left over.
The hostel here is literally seconds away from an awesome outside market that has been swarming with people getting ready for the new year. Two nights ago we toured the market trying different foods from many of the stalls and making ourselves a buffet feast of hawker stall food. Some of the things we tried were squids, chicken and prawns on sticks over small grills, mango rice, curry and chicken, seasame seed balls, which are delicious but we have no idea what is in them, fish balls, fried squid, and many other exotic things. One of the girls we went out with that evening was snacking on fried grasshoppers.
Tonight is Chinese New Year and we are going out with a group from the hostel including some people from the UK, some australians, south africans and the Thai guy.
Tomorrow we are going to catch a bus to Surathani, the port on the east coast where we will then take a ferry over to Ko Phan ngan, one of the famous east coast islands. We are pondering over the idea of taking a scuba diving course while we are there.