Thailand, with a sprinkling of Sydney and Auckland

After the last blog entry, we went out for a brazilian meal near the harbour. As a vegetarian, I've decided to take a stance on brazilian restaurants: Just say no! On the plus side, they had some Mudhouse wine, which is one of the vineyards we visited in the Marlborough region. This mostly managed to wash away the taste of the meal...mostly.

The following day, we resolved to be a bit touristy and lost no time in finding 'Mount Eden', the highest of the extinct volcanoes that are all over Auckland. The views from the top were spectacular as you could see both the city and the harbour sprawled out at your feet. Afterwards, we drove out to Kelly Tarltons underwater world, and were quite disappointed with what we saw - the penguins were cool, as penguins always are, but the rest of it consisted of a smallish fish tank (okay, small only when compared with any of the ones in Sydney aquariam) with some disconsolate stingrays trying to find a way out of it, and then a small badly lit walkthrough tunnel where you could see a couple of fish around the place. If I'd never seen Sydney Aquariam and never dived in my life, I might have enjoyed it, but as it was I was storming around the place going 'Is this it ??!?'.

Ah well. After that we had some lunch and then went to meet my cousin Robin for a coffee, which was nice. It's very strange meeting these strange people who you don't know, but who know lots of people in common with you...very strange. It was nice to catch up, however briefly, and I'm not sure when I'll see them again, which is a bit sad.

After that, we went out for dinner to a Mehican restaurant near the Sky tower. I was quite curious to try a mexican as I haven't gone out for one in aaaages, and so wanted to compare it to my own personal take on mexican cuisine. The result: Marty's enchiladas are the best, as verified by at least two unbiased neutral observers. After dinner, we got the lift up the Sky Tower to get a view of the city at night. It probably suffered by comparison to the Orbit Bar in Sydney, and also by the fact that we were the only customers, but the bar was a bit atmosphere-less. The views went some way to making up for it however!

The following day, we drove to Manukau to drop off our trusty RAV4 and get the shuttle to the airport. Our flight to Sydney was uneventful and at the other end we picked up a massive Toyota Torago to use to move around our vast number of possessions that we had stashed in safe houses all over Sydney. We drove into town to pick up Leah and then went back to theirs to spend an hour or two repacking (we decided to leave most of our mismatched crockery etc behind!) we had a delicious meal with Paul and Leah and then slept the sleep of the jet-lagged by 2 hour.

In the morning we drove out to Dave's factory workplace to pick up his keys and then went to his to pack up the rest of our stuff. It was quite hairy trying to pack it all in, and when a friend of Lorraine's rang to let us know that he'd gotten us a fabulously cheap deal on the freight it was a big relief as we could add a couple more boxes worth of stuff onto the 'must keep' pile .

After the packing was complete and delivered to Lorraine's office, we filled out all the paperwork and went (at last) to the Bar 7 pub to meet up with everybody for a drink. Sarah, Tim, Simon, Brenda, John, Dave, Dave, Lorraine, Kylie, Paul, Leah and Ed all met us there and it was great to see them all again, as we hadn't originally planned on a sneaky visit to Sydney. We ended up back in the old classic 'Strand Hotel' which both Dave and I are VIP members of...*ahem*.

We stayed in Balmain that night (thanks again to Lorraine for lending us her room), and had tea with them in the morning before going to pick up Dave for yet another 'one last breakfast at Roys'. It was yum, and we went straight to the airport afterwards. It was unreasonably easy to say goodbye to everyone as we will be seeing almost all of the Sydneysiders within the next couple of weeks for various weddings back in the auld sod.

Our flight was delayed by 3 hours, but on the plus side I used up my two free invitations to the Qantas Club airport lounge (courtesy of frequent flyer points) and so the wait was made somewhat easier due to the free drinks and snacks, as well as the very comfortable no-screaming-kids lounge...

We slept most of the flight and upon arriving in Bangkok airport we were accosted by hundreds of people wanting to give us a taxi ride into the city. I whipped out the Lonely Planet to learn about the 'right way' to get a taxi into the cab and so we joined a queue of 100 people in the 'public taxi' queue. We joined forces with an English guy in the queue ahead of us, who almost convinced us that paying five times the normal rate was okay and our bags in the back of a cab until I said No, this is too dodgy for me, and we re-joined the queue. Eventually we got into a cab and the guy tried about 10 scams on us, but eventually we ended up at our lovely luxurious five star hotel, which was cheaper then most hostels we had stayed at in NZ and Australia...

The following day we went down for a huge buffet breakfast which we followed with a leisurely dip in the pool. Thus fortified, we stepped out into the city with the plan of walking to the Ko Sahn road, an area made famous by 'The Beach' and where the bulk of backpackers go. After walking for several blocks and making no discernable progress, although we were melting from the heat, we gave in and flagged a cab. We spent the afternoon soaking up the ambience and browsing in the various markets before getting another cab across town to go to an Indian restaurant called 'Indian Hut', which had roughly the same logo as 'Pizza Hut', plus the same font...very suspicious! The food was nice however, and afterwards we got a cab to the 'Banyan Tree' to go to their bar on the 59th floor. Egads. Gadzooks. Yegods. Etc. Words cannot describe how amazing this bar is. It is aptly called the 'Vertigo Bar' as it is on the 61st floor of the Banyan Tree hotel and ... open air. We were walking up the stairs and I noticed the temperature rise sharply and thought 'what! Surely the aircon isn't broken' when I looked up and saw the moon!!!!!!! I couldn't believe it. Our table was right next to the edge and there was only a little iron bar between us and a 61 storey drop. We made a couple of nervous jokes about 'imagine abseiling down that' or 'imagine tight rope walking on that bar', but it was too scary to laugh about. It put you right at the edge of your comfort zone and you never quite manage to forget where you are and how high the drop is that is two feet to your right. Without a doubt, it is the most amazing, spectacular, mind blowing bar I have ever been to in my entire life. I would insist that anybody who travels to Bangkok goes there as it is is stupendous. I spent at least half the time I was there going 'I can't believe this' and 'This is sooo cool'. However, after my first drink, I was pretty anxious to leave . It isn't called the Vertigo bar for nothing...

The following day we had another huge breakfast and then got a cab across town to the area containing the main attractions - the Grand Palace, Wat Po and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. I aimed the cab to a place which also had several good places for lunch, and on the way down to one of these places to eat we met a 'nice' Thai lady who said she wanted the chance to practice her english on us. She also told us that all of the Grand Palace, Wat Po and Emerald Buddha were 'closed for cleaning' and that there were much better attractions at various other places. At about this time a 'Tuk-Tuk' driver approached and suddenly we had the offer of seeing them all at a huge discount! Lucky us!! Fortunately, the LP has warnings about this scam, so we distangled ourselves and headed down to the Palace etc. They were all truly spectacular, and hopefully some of my photos will do it justice.

After that, we got a boat ride down to a Sky train station. The boat ride was a bit of an eye opener as the property looking out on the river is all quite delapitated and there were 'things' floating in the water. The three-eyed fish from the Simpsons would not have looked out of place! To recover from the experience we went into the Shangri-La luxury hotel for a drink in their lobby, which was nice, before getting the Skytrain back to our hotel. We had grand plans for that evening, but Sue crashed after a shower so we just had room service and an early night. In the morning we had our third and final huge breakfast before going for a swim in both swimming pools and then catching a cab to the airport for our flight to Ko Samui.

We had some small scares, when we heard our flight was cancelled and then we were charged for excess baggage (all my dive gear is with us in 'the red bag' - not that I've used it yet!), but eventually got to Ko Samui where we got a cab to Big Buddha to catch the ferry to Koh Phangan. From the ferry pier in Haad Rin we got a cab to Ban Tai where we checked into our lovely air con bungalow before walking down to my sister Shevauns' animal clinic (www.pacthailand.org) to meet her for the first time in about a year and a half. Great to see her again and we had dinner on the balcony of her bungalow together with a few beers.

The following day I got a quick lesson in how to drive a motor cycle before we did a lap of the island to check out where we should move on to next. Sue was riding pillion behind Shev, and I was concentrating on following her tail light. We saw a few places and decided to move to one called 'Coral Bay' which is a nicely isolated little place on the north of the island. It has an eating area which looks out on a lovely bay and a great view of the sunset, which swung it for me. Apparently mum had stayed there before for two weeks and also had a really nice time. On the way back to Ban Tai it started to rain and the road conditions were a bit hairy - I had a couple of scares on the bike I can tell you! Eventually we made it to Thong Sala and had dinner in a little restaurant there before heading back home.

The following day we moved all our stuff to Coral Bay, and our rucksacks immediately exploded to fill all available stuff - it currently looks as if we could fill fifteen rucksacks with the stuff we have piled everywhere! The routine in Coral Bay is to spend lots of time on the beach, in your hammock, or eating delicious food in the restaurant, and it has been a relaxing few days. The only break from routine was a trip down to Haad Rin for the Full Moon Party, which is apparently the biggest beach party in the world. It was a good night, and fueled by much Thai red bull, which allowed us to stay up and reasonably alert until about 7am, when we turned for home. We had a delicious breakfast of fried eggs on brown rolls and tea and then turned in for a few hours kip.

Apart from that, the four days we have spent there have all been fantastically relaxing, and remarkable only by the fact that the generator only goes on at 6pm and off again at midnight. This means that we have no air con and it can get a little warm at night, even with all the doors, windows and curtains open and a light breeze disturbing the mozzie net. We've decided that we deserve a little more comfort for the last week of our little holiday and so are going to move back to our original bungalow in Ban Tai for a couple of days before moving to an even more luxurious one elsewhere for the very last couple of days.

I hope everyone is doing well, and I look forward to seeing everyone soon!

Marty