Little Old England

Home sweet home! Back on English soil now. Coming back into the country is very strange, it’s so weird hearing English people everywhere, seeing signs in just English and being able to have normal conversations with people without having to speak slowly or point at things for them to understand!

Had an amazing time in Thailand. Mainly hopping from one island to the next. Started off on the mainland at a beach called Railay which was gorgeous (the best place we visited in Thailand), with such dramatic scenery – rocks jutting up so high out of the palm tree lined sandy beaches. Dave and I tried our hand at horse riding along the beach and through the rubber plantations; our guides were very nice but didn’t understand much English. Went out on the town (well, beach bars) and sampled all the cocktails (2for1) which seemed to all taste like red sweeties or blue sweeties.

From Railay we headed to Ko Lanta for a few nights. Being out of season the entire place was dead! We did some elephant trekking through the jungle and lazed by our swimming pool – managed to get a super deal on accommodation as was so out of season. Found an excellent bar here called Otties which sold the best Masa Man curry ever (southern Thai cuisine), a delicious creamy curry.

Ko Phi Phi was our next island. Devastated by the tsunami at Christmastime, they are still rebuilding a lot of the accommodation. It was so strange to imagine a huge wave coming in across the bay and destroying so much. There was a good atmosphere about the place though despite what has happened to them and the beach was nice. The guys did some more diving at some deep water dive sites – the Hin Daeng and Hin Muang.

Got an extremely rocky boat to Phuket from Phi Phi – had to sit out on deck and slide around on our soaking wet bums as the waves crashed over the sides for 2 hours. Had a day in the sun on Kata beach in Phuket and visited the Green Man pub (and English pub supposedly) which was pretty expensive for Thailand prices! Even participated in the pub quiz, managing to come 7th out of 14 – not bad for us as we didn’t think we’d know any of the answers (we did particularly well on the ‘monster’ round, though foolishly didn’t use our joker card to gain us double points – damn!).

Next came our worst 2 days of travelling in the entire time we’ve been away! Got an overnight bus up to Bangkok and got our bags gone through without us realising – luckily nothing much of value was stolen as we didn’t have anything in our main luggage – just nail clippers, coins we’d collected etc. not a great journey! We went straight through the capital to Ko Chang, an island near the Cambodian border where we chilled out for a few days after our ordeal.

Last stop – Bangkok! A much nicer city than KL and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there even though we seemed to be rushing about all over the place to fit everything in and get it all done in 4 days. Did lots of shopping at the malls, Khoa San road and the Chuckachut weekend market; sight saw Wat Pho the reclining Buddha (huge!) and the royal palace and temple; the guys got suits tailored for them and I got a winter coat done; and of course indulged in our 5* luxury at the Davis hotel where we stayed for a super bargainous price – well recommended if anyone is going to Bangkok. Had a rooftop pool, whirlpool, sauna, Jacuzzi, gym (didn’t use that – we’ve all already lost enough weight!), and our excellent rooms stocked with slippers, bathrobes, mega shower and bath, lots of TV channels etc etc…. Plus we got breakfast included which was the biggest buffet breakfast I’ve ever seen – full on cooked stuff, continental stuff, salads, rices and the like - had to make sure we filled ourselves up everyday! The scrambled eggs and bacon was the best – mmmm, yummy!

So that’s that! 10 months and 25 days later we are finished and our world tour is over. Now, back in reality we have to sort our lives out and decide what we are going to do with ourselves. I think a good dose of Neighbours is in order – see if it’s still behind what we’ve seen in Oz (seen this morning that none of the morning TV programmes have changed – is so bizarre!), a good old raiding of the cupboards for food we’ve missed for the year and of course partying to catch up with all of you and your near year’s worth of news!