Aug 2005

So yesterday, after Michael (the german) and I went looking for stuff for his camera we came back to our hotel (not so great, pretty old but liveable) and waited for the others a bit, (we met our group leader, Yao, and he said to come back in an hours time) And so we met some more people from our group, there are 11 people in total plus Yao is 12 .
Yao - Thai Guide, grew up in the jungle in the north, very nice friendly on to it guy
Robby- American Student doing the same thing as me, taking a year off in between college and grad school. Robby played rugby in the states and has worked in Aussie i think and visited NZ
Geoff- British guy working at the bbc, compiling the different clips they need to air all their programmning.
Yuri - Finnish PC systems analyst (or something along those lines)
Hermina?? - Ex NZ living in England doing the same thing as me, she is also going to study English and Classics next year (crazy ay?)
Michael- German is going to study commerce net year
A German chick whose name I haven't caught yet
Sherry and Isaac - American couple finished Grad school
Kate - Australian working for the NSW gov with something to do with Bio/science
Nicole/Nikky - Australian has been travelling most of this yeat i think

So that's the group, i think we are goingto have a lot of fun together, btw only 7 of the 11 are doing the whole 18 days, the rest have only booked a smaller trip that does the same first part.
We might get joined by another smaller group for the second part aswell. We lso might get a different guide for the second half.

So last night after a bit of a briefing, we went out for dinner and into the really crzy touristy part of town( apparently 'the bech' begins there). the restaurant was really nice, i had crab in a yellow curry which was really nice, i also had a freshly pulp watermelon drink which was really yum (only 3NZD )

after that we went to an irish bar of all places and the beer was quite cheap and the cocktails a little bit cheaper than in NZ but not by much, I didn't drink but we all had a really good time dancing. they had two very good live bands, lots of the Chillis and heaps of those songs that everyone loves. so yeah all good.

This morning the plan was to go and see the grand palace, the reclining Bhuddah and take a canal tour, I started getting ready oly to find to my horror that my camera was missing I seached everywhere and got increasignly frustrated, (i' sue sue can still remember my 'angry trying to find something' act, not a happy place, anyway the group had to go and I had to pack (also I forgot about the 12pm checkout so i'd gone and washed clothes and hung them out to dry thinking i could take them down at 4pm an hour before we left, so i stayed to look for my camera and pack. I went everywhere looking for it, the restaurant, the bar, a stall Michael was looking at jeans in, eventually almost given up all hope i checked the internet cafe it went to yesterday and voila it was there waiting for me, so hopefully that means i won't loose it again.

I think i'll try catch a canal tour before getting back to the hotel at four (1ohour before our departure)

ok you all take care, hope your eyes are ok.

Mike

Well I bought some boardshorts today, i wanted to buy these Thai style ones but i wasn't sure if i was tie-ing (aaah help me phillip of spelling) them up right as they are REALLY huge around the waist and you tie them to suit you so they are like one size fits all (americans included). In the end I just bought some standard nonames, well actually i lie, they are "hacker active" boardshorts hahaha, spose i'm a hacker now.

I also spent a LOT of ime looking for a surf shop, without sucsess, lots of "this way" "that way" "this way ten minute" "ahh what is suf" mmmm i think i'll have better luck at the coast?

I forgot to say yesterday that I went to go see some sights, This local told me that I should see "gloden buddah/bhudda?" and "black bhudda" and some other stuff because it was a special holiday, and it was free. so he found me a government tuk-tuk (much cheaper because of government funding for tourism) so i went to see the golden bhudda, which was quite impressive, 32m high 11m wide and covered from toenails to topknot in gold leaf, it is HUUUGE (oh it's also called the standing bhudda (most are sitting or lying down apparently) I also went to see the black bhudda but the temple it is in is under rennovation, but I did get shown a green bhudda, situated in a prayer room which was carver out of sodild emerald and slighty smaller than a real person, sitting cross-legged with a 20c high ruby bhudda in front of that.

By then i had the mean headache so i skipped the rest and went home.

Ok

hope you weren't too bored by the read

Hi everybody, still having a good time, (except for the headache) but that is gone now, it's pretty neat at the moment i'm spending under 20B a meal which is less than 1NZ$ crazy ay, last night I went to a japanese restaurant which was way to expensive for what i got, but it was late and everywhere else was closed. I also help a guy from Mongolia find where he had to go, which was quite funny seeing as i'd been here all of 3 days. anyway i'm gonna get a drink to wash down breakfast (which was rice with some sort of short cucumber, some other sweet/tangy vegetable and a bit of egg.)
Hahaha nothing has out spice me yet, but i did have some pastry balls which were pretty gross yesterday.

Adios Ameegos

PS the weather is really humid here and we had rain the day before yesterday, but none yesterday as far as I could tell.
(tami your friends are probably in the north, i've heard there is quite heavy flooding in Chang Mai (Maybe they will change our trip to suit that? as Chang mai is our first stop after bangkok)
Apparently the local aren't too phased about it and just start rolling up their trousers and turning the pumps on.

Hey everybody, day two is going wel, i caught the sky train across town, more in to the centre of the action, so far i haven't hit any REALLY touristy spots which is nice.

I caught a Tuk-Tuk around the city aswell, the driverpointed out that the area i was planning to shop in only opened at 10:30 so he said he'd take me somewhere that was open for only 15 Bhat, he was a really nice guy, he took me past the soccer stadium where spain had recently played. Then he took me to a suit making shop, which i looked around a bit but didn't really want to, so we made a plan he wanted to take me to another shop and then to the shopping centres which would be open and if I spent ten minutes at this one shop he'd get a petrol voucher from them and he wouldn't charge me, so i had a look at a LOT of rings and neclaces and gems, apparently quite cheap but I wouldn't know, so after about 15-20 minutes we left and he took me to the mall for free so all in all it was quite a good experience.

But yeah i'm doing LOTS of walking so my feet hurt, there is lots to buy if you are looking for tacky tourist rubbish, I found one camping store which was interesting, it's so dumb all the 'sports stores'only sell soccer boots and clothes no actual sport equipment.

ok i'll probably post again tonight. see ya all

Yeah so my first day has gone well, caught the airport bus to my guesthouse, checked in, carried my stuff up like 5 flights of stairs, had someone else join my tonight (I was alone in the room before) I've had sum REALLY nice street vendor and small restarant food all very cheap. Ok i'll post again tomorrow (PS thank you Dave, Chris and Paul for the comments)