Peace from the Middle East

Been a week in old, cold, gray London. Massive climate change from where we've been! London is sweet, once you nail the tube, you're pretty set. Been crashing with my cuz, Louise, and it's been awesome. She's been looking after me real well. Off on the Topdeck tour on Sat, so amping for that!

Anyways, this is the Dubai post, so here goes...



Our first day in Dubai was a pretty slow start. VPT had work in the morning, but promised us a mean feed of dirty bird (KFC) on his return to watch the recorded Warriors vs Rabbitohs game. I was pretty excitied. The Warriors game wasn't actually on until the next day, but the epic feed of KFC more than made up for it. As with any feed of KFC, we couldn't move for the rest of the afternoon, but as sun started dropping down over the Gulf, we drove out to check out some sights (the Palm, Atlantis) and have a couple ciders at the beach bar Barasti. That night, vaughan took us to Karachi Darbar, this indian restaurant with dirt cheap, awesome indian food. Seriously, this place is a one in a million joint. I ordered a curry, nan and rice (standard procedure) and battled to get through half of it. Combining all three of our feeds, we barely finished half of the food. Vaughan originally ordered 4 nans for himself, but the waiter told him it was gonna be too much. The bill came to about 70 Dirhams - the equivalent of about $22! and that was for 3 of us!

Day 2 we hit up Wild Wadi, one of the water parks in Dubai. Was pretty sweet. People in Dubai are pretty lazy, so there were no stairs to climb to get to the top of the slides, instead, you get in your tube and get shot up to the start of the slides by a water slide. Water slide to get to the water slides - why didn't anyone think of this sooner?! The biggest slides there we had to climb up to tho, but it was worth it. We spent a good few hours at this water park, before crusing to check out the Burj Al ... somthing. It's the big one that looks like a sail. Couldn't get in, so just took some photos from outside.

Third day in Dubai, me and Alex were on our own. Vaughan had to see patients from 11 - 8pm. We ended up pretty much mall bashing for the most of the day. Dubai has about 60 malls around the place. They don't skimp on the size of malls either. You could easily kill a day in one mall, these are massive. Original plan was to head to Marina mall and catch an abra (water taxi) round the shoreline into Old Dubai. We got to the mall and just missed the 11am ferry, the next one was at 5pm... so that plan went down the drain. Grabbed a feed at TGI Fridays, where every day is Friday. Epic feed for 35 Dirhams. We decided to go the more boring route to Old Dubai, we jumped on the metro. 16 Dirhams for an all day pass wasn't too bad, nice a/c trains. They love buffing the tiled floors here - i spend most of the time trying not to bail in my jandals and the other times i feel like i'm walking in sand cos my feet are slipping out from under me. We got to Old Dubai and checked out the Gold Souk and Spice Souk. Souks are the old school markets. Pretty cool, but nowadays they're just a bunch of small shops under a covered path. The buildings are cool tho. We caught a 1 dirham (30 cent) abra across the river and caught the train to Dubai mall. Dubai Mall is MASSIVE. Supposed to be the biggest mall in the world. it felt like it, with it's ice rink, movie theatre, Sega Republic (indoor theme park), indoor aquarium and underwater zoo... not to mention the shopping and multiple food courts. I asked the information desk how long it would take to walk every floor and every hall, they siad about 24 hours. We gave it a good shot - didn't stop at most the shops, but got round most of it in 4.5 hours. The mall is right next to the Burj Khalifa - the world's tallest building. The Burj is HUGE. I thought the Auckland Sky Tower was tall, but this shits all over it. it's around 828m high, but more on that later.

Day four, Vaughan had a video conference in the morning, so me and al headed up to the pool area. Jumped in the sauna, man those things are hot. I sweated from places i didn't think it was possible. The temp cranked up to about 52 degrees, got too intense so we bailed and hit up the pool til vaughan finished his conference. That afternoon we'd locked in a desert safari with Arabian nights tours. Our driver, Khalid, picked us up around 3:30pm. We shared our land cruiser with this indian family. I rode shotgun, so was legit. We drove about an hour our into the desert and met up with the rest of the company's 4x4s, then went nuts in the dunes. Was freaking sweet man. Khalid would boost up a dune to near the edge, swing it round and send sand flying over the car and into the air. We'd cruise along the ridgelines and then just drop over the edge and drift the whole way down a dune. there were no sickbags, so I was stoked to be in shotgun. The indian family were right at the back and the younger son was whining by the end. don't think he was feeling so good. After about an hour or so, we stopped off at a camp site, where there was camel riding, sandboarding, quad biking, henna tattooing, free shisha, all sorts. Non-alcoholic drinks were free, food was all free. This is the life man. There was a free buffet BBQ dinner, and dancing shows - a belly dancer and a tandoor (a dude who spins round). We smashed the sandboarding first - was pretty average. you got these old snowboards, which was sweet, but the dunes weren't high or steep enough to have any real fun. Next we hit up the camel riding, that was alright. Tuffy had the lead camel, and VPT and I shared the second one. Our camel mustn't have been happy with the weight it was carrying cos it kept kicking up its legs and me and vaughan. meh, it was only a 2 minute ride, it'll live. We went to get henna - even though i thought it was a girls thing. The only condition for us getting a henna was that she had to draw the warriors logo. she couldn't do it, so we flagged. The dance show was sweet. The belly dancer was a bit average, but the tandoor dude was epic. He basically spun round with this sweet get-up on for 15-20 mins. I thought he would arse-up after it, but when he stopped he was sweet. When he finished, he asked people from the crowd to have a go. This russian dude jumped up and started spinning. He was going all good, but after a while started to lose it then arsed-up. A couple more had a go, then the russian dude's wife jumped up. She went hard, tried to show off, but then absolutely arsed up. did the whole running sideways no balance thing and almost bailed off the stage. That was definitely one of the highlights. The free buffet feed was up there also. Massive feed. The whole tour wrapped up at round 9pm and we eventually got back round 10:30pm. Wicked day.

Slow start to the 5th day in Dubai - we were pretty knackered from the day before. Vaughan had planned to take us to Ferrari world in Abu Dhabi. The world's fastest rollercoaster is there. We were pretty excited, but we rang up to confirm and it was going under it's annual maintenance and closed for the next two weeks. Mad buzz kill that. They'd started maintenance two days before... Instead we hit up the Wadi Adventure park in Al Ain. Epic place, that only opened 2 months ago. There's kayaking, white water rafting, surfing, high ropes course, and a zip line. Took ages to get there tho. We only locked in the rafting, everything else was booked out. I don't know how it was - when we got there we were one of about 20 people in the whole park... The rafting was sweet, all the courses were man-made. They took us on some pretty tame rapids to start off with, just to get us used to the calls, then we hit the proper rapids. They were nothing compared to some of the ones in NZ, but they were continuous, so there was no break between. We did the loop about 5 times. I bailed on the first loop, the water was pretty rough, but not deep. there were some hairy bits that Asty spent a lot of the time on top of vaughan. After the water park, we headed up the mountain there, Jebel Hafite. Vaughan's Nissan Sunny got a decent work out. Awesome views and awesome mountain, but the thunderstorm rolled in and vis went crap. It started hailing, so we headed down the hill. All the locals were going crazy, cars were parked up and everyone was running round checking out the hail. I liken it to the snow in wellington, when everyone stopped working and checked out the snow. Drivers didn't know how to handle it, they were driving like we would in NZ if there was black ice on the roads. Also, none of the roads had any drainage, so there were huge puddles of water around. We got back from Al Ain round 7:30pm. We'd booked to go up the Burj Khalifa at 10pm, so we headed in to Dubai mall, grabbed a feed (yum cha food) and watched the water fountain show, before heading up the Burj. We headed up the Burj, 124 floors up was the observation deck. We felt a little cheated, they said we'd get to the top, but we were no where near the top. oh well, we were still pretty high up. It was open roof observation deck. got a little vertigo getting right near the edge of the vewing platform, but the barriers were pretty high (to stop jumpers) so it was all good.

We perched up for the Thursday, hit up the mall for a bit and then played some tennis in the afternoon. That night Kate and vaughan organised an evening brunch - basically an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink dinner. It was pretty awesome, and only cost 200 dirhams. It was an asian themed night, so sushi, noodles, rice, pork, duck, chicken, curry, tempura, seafood - awesome food. We also had beers, wines, and spirits (vodka, gin, rum, whisky) free-flowing. was mint. After dinner, we checked out this bar called "Rock Bottom," and it was. Quite similar to the ol' KCs in dunedin. We didn't last long there, maybe 2 minutes, before we headed back to Barasti for the rest of the night.

Friday was league day. The Kiwis were playing Aussie in the ANZAC test. We boosted to the palms to VPT's mates penthouse appartment to watch the game. Awesome pad, but they were all Aussie supporters. Was a good game, but the kiwis lost, again. I don't think they've one and ANZAC test since 1998... Later that afternoon, we hit up the Dubai mall so Al could pick up his sunnies. The malls are the place to be on a Friday night man. It was pumping. People everywhere. Massive mission to get a park. Afta Al got his glasses, we gapped it ASAP, and tried to find this BBQ buffet place. We eventually got there, but was booked out. Guts. We decided to drive to Bur Dubai (old school part of town) and check out any cheap indian joint. Found this place called "Chaavadi" and got an epic feed.

We flew out of Dubai the next day at 3pm. Pretty much woke up, packed, and left. Asty squeezed in a hair cut at the mall before leaving. The lines at the Airport to check in were massive, so we tried self check-in. I got through sweet and had a seat. Not the same for Al. His screen read "flight full, no more seats". I was left to decide whether I locked in my seat, or risk the massive check-in line. Couldn't leave a man behind, so I gave up the seat and went with Alex to regular check-in. We got to the counter and the lady managed to get us both on the plan. Alex got a seat in row 24, and i got shafted into row 47. no karma there... but it did come back when i went to board. my seat got changed, so got bumped into row 24 - same as Al, but a couple seats down. Legit. Flight was sweet, smashed a couple movies. We landed in London around 7:30pm local time. Cleared immigration no worries - Alex had to see the doctor tho. Caught the train into town and met up with my cuz, Louise, and her boyfriend Liam. Perching at their's in Shepherd's bush for the week before heading off on our topdeck tour on Sat morning.

Anyways, next post will be a while off, but hopefully it'll be worth the wait!

!!Yeeeaaa Buoy

I'm writing this in Dubai, where everything's right to left... so not sure how this'll turn out...

We left sunny warm Koh Phangan and headed for the even warmer Koh Tao. I locked in a Padi Open Water dive course with Crystal Dive who are a pretty sweet outfit. The package cost just under $300 and hooked me up with the dive course plus free accommodation for four nights, a free BBQ and t-shirt. they were probably incorporated into the costs, but i'm a sucker for freebees.

Russell (beer), Hamish, Me, Justin, Kerryn, Gintare, Ilma, Nic, Alex (beer)

We touched down in Koh Tao round 11am and my course started that afternoon at 1:30pm (4 hours in a classroom... atleast the classroom had aircon!). Our instructors were Nicola and Hamish, both English and real good sorts. We also had a dive master (Pete) join us for the actual dives, so we were pretty well covered. There were seven of us in our group, two lithuanian girls (Gintare and Ilma), a canadian girl (Kerryn), an american dude (Justin), an irish guy (Russell) and a german (Alex). All good value so there were some good laughs along the way. Especially from Russell and Alex, those two were hard cases. The actual learning videos were pretty boring, as was most of the classroom stuff, but the actual dives were AWESOME. My dive buddy was Justin and in our first two dives we mostly covered skills, with a bit of a swim round checking out stuff. The last two dives were less skills and more actual diving. Alex and Russell had a big night out the night and were seriously hung on for the last two dives. We saw heaps of different fish and coral and went down to around 17m. Was awesome. Pretty hooked on diving now! Pete (the dive master) got charged by a trigger fish - that was pretty awesome. What wasn't awesome was the early starts... most days we had to be up at 7am... wasn't as bad as Asty, he had to be up at 6am for his "fun" dives.

View from the lookout over Koh Tao

I had the last afternoon off from my dive course, so me and tuffy spent the afternoon having an explore round the island. We rode scooters up to a lookout that looked out over the western side of the island (the main part - Sairee and Mae Haad). Awesome view, but a bit of an adventure getting up there. My scooter was a gutless piece of crap, so had to walk it up some steep parts. I'm glad the brakes worked on the way back down though, otherwise things could have got pretty hairy. We got some epic rain on a couple days on the island. Massive thunderstorms with huge down pours. Got stuck in the restaurant... could've been stuck more worse places i guess...

Alex, Joslynn, Stacey, and Me

I got a message from Joslynn while we were on Koh Tao saying that her and Stacey were gonna be coming over for a night. Pretty confident they were starting to stalk us now... They'd booked flights from Phuket to Singapore, so wanted to check out Koh Tao while they had the chance. We met up in the afternoon and then again for dinner and a couple drinks that night. Was good to see them again. There was a massive earthquake off Indonesia that afternoon, so all these warning of tsunami were flying round. Koh Tao was sweet, but apparently Phuket was expecting a 9m tsunami. The girls were a bit worried about their trip, but the warning were lifted by the evening.

Sunset from the bus to Bangkok

The next morning, we got the boat to Chumporn, then transferred to a bus for the final leg to Bangkok. another full days travel, 10am to 8:30pm. We're pretty pro at long distance travel now, so wasn't too bad. Was epically hot that day, probably one of the hottest so far. The half hour wait between boat and bus was pretty sticky, but atleast the bus had good aircon. We were supposed to be dropped off at Khao San Rd in Bangkok, but because Songkran (Thai new year/water festival) was starting up, the roads were shut off. Some people weren't happy... one lady was screaming her head off at the bus company, but it wasn't gonna get her anywhere. We got a taxi to near Khao San and found a room asap, to avoid getting floured and water bombed.

Waterguns for sale...everywhere!

The next day was the official start to Songkran, but cos we were flying to Dubai, we weren't real keen to board a 6-7 hour plane soaking wet and covered in flour. Instead we boosted from the Khao San area to MBK where we could dump our bags for the day and just perch round the mall in the A/C. We were pretty low on Baht by this stage, so were trying to stretch our coin as far as we could. We went to see a movie tho. Battleship. entertaining, but equally as painful. It's based on the game battleship, so i'll let you make your own mind up about it. In thailand, at the start of each movie, they make you stand up and respect the King of Thailand. Everyone in the cinema stands up while a montage of the king is played. At first, I thought everyone was standing up to try find better seats...

Our flight to Dubai that night was packed. It seemed like a pretty long trip as well, didn't help that we had to circle for nearly an hour before we could land. We weren't sure if Vaughan was meeting us at the airport or not, but if he was he would have had to wait for an extra hour and a half, not ideal at 1 in the morning. We cleared customs and grabbed our bags. Asty thought it was ridiculous that the customs officials had to wear the full desert kit, i.e. white sheet, with white head towel and ring thing. Quote "the outfits would be ideal for a three day trek in the desert but not for sitting in a customs booth" "you wouldn't see NZ customs official sitting there in flax skirts". Anyways, we were walking out into the arrival lounge, scouting out for a white dude, and just as we got to the end, VPT was standing there amongst the taxi drivers in a red All Blacks training jersey and a sign with our names on it. Classic move VPT.

We're now perched up at VPT's pad. pretty nice place. Can't believe that our time in South East Asia is over. 5 and a half weeks has flown by! Gonna miss that place and the sweet weather, I will be back tho. Anyways, look out London, I'll be catching you pretty soon!

I got a hangover... woaaaahh

This is probably gonna be a very uninspiring blog. I'm pretty hung from the full moon party last night.

Our first full day on Koh Phangan we rented scooters and went on a mission round the island. Scooters cost round 150 baht for 24 hours, pretty cheap. They should make the helmets bigger tho. Its pretty warm on the island, so boosting round on bikes makes it more tolerable, nice and breezy. First stop was a waterfall/lookout. The waterfall was barely more than a trickle. Me and Wrighty checked out the same waterfall 4 years ago when we were here and it was way better then. The look out was a good workout to get to, but was pretty choice once you got to the top. Awesome view out over the western side of the island. The clouds rolled in as we got back to our bikes. Scootering round in the rain is not that much fun. Thunderstorms are even less fun. We boosted back to Thong Sala to grab a feed and wait for the thunderstorm to pass. We were drenched, but it wasn't cold, so it was ok. After lunch, we managed to find Sea Scene and went for a swim/walk round the resort. If you act like you're supposed to be there, no one asks questions, so we never got asked if we actually stayed there or not. It was round 4pm, so we thought we'd better boost, so that we could still get round a few of the other beaches on the west side. It was low tide, so we could really swim, more like sit in the knee deep water. We worked our way round to the north side of the island and followed this sign to a lookout. The path got a bit hairy and steep in places. Would have been sweet if we had offroad bikes, but not as easy on scooters. We bottomed out and nearly bailed a couple times, but eventually made it to this look out. The sun was setting, so it was a pretty sweet view. Didn't hang round too long tho, stuff tryna ride the scooters back on that path in the dark! We boosted back to Haad Rin as it started getting dark and the "lights" on the scooters were pretty shite. I'm pretty sure my bike had a speed limiter, I couldn't get my bike faster than around 82km/h. Asty reckoned he got to over 90km/h and the bike was still climbing. I felt a bit ripped off.

After giving our bikes back in, we went for a quick swim in the pool at our resort, then headed down to the beach for a feed and some beers. The nights leading up to the Full Moon Party are just as good as the night itself. I actually think they're better - not as crowded. Kind of like how New Year's Eve Eve is always better than actual New Year's Eve. Anyways, we grabbed a couple buckets and perched up watching the fire dancers at Cactus bar. These guys are awesome man - VPT would have loved it. Fire pois and fire staffs. I don't know what it is, but alcohol makes fire AWESOME. Bumped into Joslynn and Stacey, along with a couple of their other friends from Canada and hung with them for the rest of the night. Got pretty loose man. Good fun tho!

Next morning was a bit rough. Didn't really have time to let the hangover pass as we had to get our gear sorted for the Full Moon Party. Bright florescent paint, bright clothes. Pretty much try grab anything that's bright. Town started humming with people. Apparently there were around 20,000 people were expected to turn up to the beach for the party. EPIC. We painted up and headed down to the beach around 8:30pm. The beach was still fairly busy, on par with the night before. We were trying to meet up with a whole bunch of people down there; the Canadians, Erika (another Canadian), and the Germans (Lena and Sarah). We blew out big time, and only managed to find the Germans. By around 10pm, the beach was packed. It got pretty hard to walk round. People still seemed to be coming to the beach from everywhere. Met this kiwi dude from Timaru and his mates from Gold Coast. They were smashed pretty early on, so not sure how/if  they lasted. Can't really explain the party, so i'll just list a few words that describe what went down: buckets, florescent clothes, drunk clothes, fire jump rope, fire dancers, LOUD music, UV paint, craziness. The Germans called it a night around 12:30pm, so Asty and I went for a wander to down the beach to check out the far end. They had a designated sleeping area, which was pretty tempting at the time. The effects of the nights before caught up with me again, so we didn't make it to sunrise. By that stage tho, everyone was pretty much out of their minds. The music was still pumping til round 8am. 

Today has pretty much been a waste of a day. A lot of sleeping and Karl Pilkington. Heading to Koh Tao tomorrow morning. In one week we'll be in Dubai, and in two weeks we'll be in London!! 

Angkor WHAT?!?!

well, that was and EPIC trip. We have arrived in Koh Phangan after a massive 30 hours travelling from Siem Reap... but more on that later. There are a number of Wats to talk about first.

We left Phnom Penh at 8am on the 31st of March and arrived in Siem Reap at around 4pm. Once again, our VIP Aircon bus didn't have the aircon on, so it was another very sweaty bus ride. Why?! This one ranked well up there with the sleeper bus from Hoi An to Nha Trang. Anyways, we had arranged for a pick up from the bus station to a hotel, but our tuk tuk driver had also arranged a pick up on the sly, so when we got off there were two dudes holding signs that said "Mr Alex + Mr Chris." We went with the hotel dude, cos we told Bora (the tuk tuk driver from Phnom Penh) that we didn't need one. Cheeky darky.

The hotel was pretty nice. Big room, a/c, pool, free brekky. $25 per night tho... we started to walk out and our tuk tuk driver arraged with the hotel to drop the price a bit, so we stayed there. Thom (our tuk tuk driver in Siem Reap) was a good dude, and offered to take us on a tour of the city. Swt deal for us, saved us a walk into town and gave us an idea of the layout of Siem Reap. Only downfall was that when we decided to go, it rained. I mean it RAINED! We were swt in the back, cos the Thom rolled down the sides on the tuk tuk, but he got drenched sitting out front! wasn't much of a tour, cos we couldn't see much thru the rain, but he dropped us off at a buffet dinner place that also puts on a show during dinner. Not bad for $12. too bad our stomachs have shrunk since starting our trip... could not do the buffet justice... gave it a good crack tho. Thom suggested that after our torturous bus trip that day we should go get massages done. This guy must have been reading our minds or something. Traditional Khmer Massage. Very nice 60mins. We got to put on these classice pjs for it, i'm guessing they were supposed to be loose and full length - I felt a little like Bruce Banner as he changes into the incredible hulk (the buttons were almost popping off the shirt). Anyways, Ray Mysterio (me) and John Cena (Alex) gave the masseurs a pretty good workout. Feeling pretty relaxed after that, we called it a night and tried to get some sleep before hitting up the first of our two days of temple runs.

The next morning round 8:30am we left on the first temple run. Thom didn't turn up to take us, as his daughter was sick and needed to go to the hospital, so his brother Cobra (don't know how they come up with these names) drove us instead. We hopped in Cobra's Starship and headed north about 35 km to the first temple. I'm not going to describe each temple we went to, because you will end up like us at the end of it - temple out. I'll just list them off in order of visit: Banteay Srei, East Mebon, Ta Som, and Preah Khan. These were some of the smaller temples (barring Preak Khan). We wanted to leave the big hitters for the last day. The temples are cool, the inscriptions and carvings are awesome. I like the crumbling, fragility of them all as well, although you crap urself a little when you think that the massive stones over your head could fall down. At each temple, there are kids trying to sell you little knick-knacks and adults trying to sell you clothes, books, food, water... After two temples, I decided to cough up for a guide book, as we were aimlessly wandering through these temples without a clue what they were about. that didn't stop them hassling me to buy more guide books... "You buy guidebook" "No, already have" "how bout you buy another one. Have two. I make you good price". Or with the other hawkers "you buy from me" "no thank you" "maybe later then?" "maybe" "yeah, you buy from me after, i remember your face and your friend, you not buy from someone else, you buy from me". We finished up this batch of temples by around 1:30pm. By then the sun was intense. it's hot enough walking/climbing these temples, but add the Cambodian sun and you're losing a serious amount of fluid. Cobra took us back to town and we decided that we may as well book our bus to Bangkok on the way back to our hotel - get it sorted early. We ended up paying $15 each for the bus, not too unreasonable (we thought, turned out we got sold up the river a little), but we made sure that there was aircon and the aircon actually worked (which it did, thankfully). The rest of the day, we just perched round the hotel and then wandered into the old market and pub street for a feed, etc. Cos we locked in sunrise at Angkor Wat the next morning, we called it in early - 5am start next day!

Alarm goes off at 4:45am. Why did we do this to ourselves... anyway, we got up and went to wait for our tuk tuk. Thom turned up about 15mins late. He'd only got a call from Cobra half our before saying that he was too hung to drive us today... Anyways, Thom drove us, which was sweet. He's a good dude, so we weren't too bummed. He still got us to Angkor for sunrise... only issue was that the low morning cloud meant that the sun didn't appear til around 7-7:30am, bit gutting as we got there at 6am. Still a cool experience. Angkor Wat is HUGE. we couldn't get right to the top, but man, it's awesome. We spent a good couple hours wandering round checking out the inscriptions, carvings, architecture of it all. Massive walls with story carvings. We couldn't get over how they built these places way back in the 1200s. epic work.

After Angkor Wat, we went to visit a smaller temple, Banteay Kdai. It was smaller, but was conveniently on the way to Ta Prohm (tomb raider temple). Ta Prohm was probably my second favourite, even equal top, temple. It was where parts of Tomb Raider were either filmed or based on. It had trees growing through it, almost jungle city. It would have been an epic place for paintball, laser tag, or even hide-and-seek. The sun starting cranking up the heat while we were here - didn't bode well for the next temple, Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom isn't really a temple in itself, but a site of a number of temples. Thom said he'd do a slow drive by of some of the smaller ones, so we could take pictures and check them out from the comfort of the tuk tuk. We did get out and climb up to the top of Baphoun tho. That was an epic climb, especially in the heat. But man, it was wicked at the top. Climbing up was sweet. Going down wasn't. Even with the constructed "steps," you're still clinging to the handrail, would have been a nightmare going up the original stairs! The last temple we went to was Bayon. It had something like 53 Bhudda-head towers, representing the 53 provinces in Cambodia. Was an epic way to finish, but we were definitely getting to the point of templed out at this stage. We snapped Thom having an epic moi-perch in the back of the tuk tuk.

Later that afternoon, Thom took us to see the floating villiage - where people actually lived on floating houses that were all anchored together in a sort of floating community. Was an experience - some good, some not so good. i think the epic lack of sleep and a morning of temple climbing probably added to the lack of enthusiam on my part. I wasn't so stoked with the forced charity out there. We were driven to a shop and when we got off they gave us a spiel about how poor the people are and how the kids are suffering, we were going to give them some money... five dollars... but they wanted us to buy goods for the kids. They suggested a sack of rice or a box of noodles. The sack of rice was $75 US. No chance. The noodles were 50 cents a pack. We offered to buy 10 packets, they said that we had to buy a box of 50 packets. $25 bucks. No chance. In the end, we bought this packet of snacks that we had to hand out to the kids. That was cool, but snacks aren't really gonna help them out in the long run and cos we had to hand them out, we ended up disrupting the class with rice snacks. no gain really. They would have been better to collect donations and eventually they would have enough to buy the sack of rice. those kids must be sick of those rice snacks, cos all the other boats were buying them as well. Anyways, we were pretty knackered after the boat trip, so called it quits. Later that evening we went back to Pub street for a feed and a few beers. We'd heard wonders about a fish massage, where you stick ur feet into this tank of fish and they go nuts on ur feet. Trust me, one of the most crazy awesome things around, especially cos it cost $3, is unlimited time-wise, and you get a free beer out of it. Asty and I were the first ones in and when you hovered ur feet over this tank, all the fish congregate below ur feet, as if they can sense them coming. Can't really describe the feeling tho, it's weird, funny and tickles, but once you get over that, it's just awesome. Apparently they eat off all the dead skin on your feet. We must have had a good amount of dead skin, cos they were going nuts on ours. Even when new people got in, the fish still were going crazy on our feet!

The next morning, we started what would be the most epic travelling journey i've done so far. Easily beating the 25 hour bus from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur for years ago. We got picked up from our hotel at 7:30am and got to the border at around lunch time. Erika (from Canada that we hung out in Luang Prabang with) was on our bus. She only paid $9 for her ticket... Anywas, we didn't factor in that we had to carry our gear across the border, but eventually got into Thailand. We had a short amount of time for lunch and then jumped into our minivan to Bangkok. Our driver was nuts man. We boosted to Bangkok, and finally got dropped off at the southern bus station round 6pm. Now the issue was trying to get a bus ticket down to Koh Phangan. We had accom booked there from the 4th, so and overnight bus would have been ideal. It was madness at the station - most busses were full and there were locals and foreigners everywhere scrambling to find a bus. After about 5 or 6 counters turned us away, we finally got a ticket. The bus left at 10pm and we'd travel to Chumporn for the ferry at 7am. We arrived at the station in Chumport at 4am, and had to sit round til 7... The ferry had to stop at Koh Tao on the way through to Koh Phangan. We got to Koh Tao round 10:30am, dropped some people off and picked up a whole lot more. The cabin didn't have any aircon or windows, so was a pretty unbearable trip. We finally arrived in Koh Phangan round 12:30pm and got in a taxi bus to Haad Rin, where the full moon is. Our "resort" ended up being up a fairly decent walk, but it's pretty legit. Awesome views, and far enough away that the noise from the parties is tolerable.

Anyway, enough already. You're probably getting blogged-out. I am.
Time to go scooter round the island. Catch ya on Koh Tao!
Eeeeaaannn!