Barcelona, Ole!

Half recovered from the epic times on Topdeck and chewing through the pounds in London, Alex and I decided to high-tail it outta London town back to Europe - more specifically Spain. We didn't really have a plan - just get to Barcelona, meet up with Tessa, then down round the coast to Portugal, and then back to Madrid by the 15th of June to catch up with Sly and one of Asty's mates.

We got into Barcelona and figured out the bus to town, but once we got in town, had no idea how to find the hostel. Asty adopted his sun theory and that surprisingly helped us find out way to the hostel. The hostel was pretty average, but good enough for the location. By the time we checked in and all, it was round 8:30pm so we went for a wander round town to try find a feed. This eventually happened, but we discovered 1.5L bottles of Sangria for 3 euro first, so we started a bit of a drinking walking tour of barcelona by night. Once the bottles ran dry, we were pretty hungry - so the next task was to find a sweet joint that did a cheap-ish paella. We smashed a paella, but to be honest, i don't really remember how decent it was.




The next day, we hit up the free walking tour with a couple french canadians from the hostel. The tour was actually pretty decent value, and the guide new his stuff... or he sold it well enough. The walking tour only really covered the old gothic town, which was sweet, cos it was midday in the sun. After the tour, we got 2 euro pints at travel bar (where the tour finished up) and then checked out the awesome beach at Barcelona. A few of us from the tour decided to lock in a Flamenco dance and tapas night, which ended up being pretty sweet. The dancing was cool and the tapas were epic. The tapas actually made it worth it - pretty much unlimited sangria and all-you-can-eat tapas. Not much happened after tapas, as we were all pretty much near the point of food coma .

The same joint that ran the free walking tour also ran a free bike tour, which took you to places outside the old town. We hit this up on the next day. We had to rent a bike for 5 euro, but that was nothing. The bike tour lasted about 3 hours and took us round the beach, through the olympic village, up past the bullfighting ring to La Sagrada Familia, round a couple Gaudi buildings, down through the Arc de Triomf, and back to travel bar. Once again, we hit up the cheap pints for a bit. Tessa arrived while we were on the bike tour, so we arranged to meet her at the hostel at 6pm - after picking up a couple bottles of Don Simon sangria for 2.65 euro of course. Travel Bar also ran a cheap bar crawl for 13 euro. Pretty much got us a beer and a shot at each of the 4 bars and then free entry into the night club at the end. We couldn't turn down an offer like that, but thought we'd better grab a feed first. On our way outta the hostel, we met these two aussie chicks (Amy and Minnie) and convinced them to come get amongst. So after a few tapas, we were on our way on the pub crawl. This ended up being a massive night out - the free drinks were good value, so we didn't need really any extra drinks, but we bought them any way...

The next morning was rough. I mean really rough - we didn't surface til round 12:30pm. We took Tess on a shortened tour of the Old City and tried to recall as much of the free walking tour that we could. We did pretty well, given the shocking state we were in. We made it down into the port area, perched for a bit, but then decided it was time for a siesta. Epic siesta as well, was nearly 3 hours long. So far this day, we'd slept more that we'd been awake! We were pretty shattered, but hungry, so did a cheeky BK run before hunting out a decent paella. The night was fairly quiet, also we'd locked in kayaking trip up the coast the following day, so needed to be in peak physical condition for that!

can ya spot me?

The kayaking trip was awesome. We drove an hour or so up the coast to Costa Brava where we would be kayaking and snorkelling. The water was pretty nippy, so the snorkelling was fairly short lived. Kayaking was sweet tho - we ducked into a cave that was pitch black and rolled up next to a rock that we could jump off. Looked alright from the kayak, but once ur up top it's pretty damn high. Tuffy and I jumped, Tessa opted to stay in the kayak and take the pics. We kayaked for round 3 hours then headed back to Barcelona. we were pretty shattered, i wanna say from kayaking, but probably a two day hangover... drowned a couple ciders and called it a night as we needed a decent sleep before attempting our first driving experience in Europe!

TOPDECK!!

Warning: this may be pretty long - get a coffee before you start reading

This is gonna be one of the hardest blogs to write so far...
I'll try break it down by city and give a brief recollection of each place

Paris, France (Day 1 - 3)
After a night on the beers, we had to get up at 4:45am to catch the tube to the Clink 78 Hostel in Kings Cross to meet our tour party. We got there and were not in the best shape. 7am rolled round and we were on our way to Dover to catch the ferry to France. Dover was pretty cool, well the cliffs were. We had a bit of a wait at the terminal, so coffees and introductions were made. There were 34 of us on the bus, so it took a few days to nail down everyone's names proper - some were still battling later in the trip...
The bus trip to Paris that day was long, we arrived sometime round 6 and had a dinner booked for us at a local french restaurant. Got the snails and frogs legs crossed off the list of foods to eat and jumped on the bus for our night tour of the city. We saw most of the sites, but not really cos we were on a bus.
The next day was a free day, so we could explore the city on our own. We got a drop off at the Lourve to meet Andrew at 9. He was still in bed and gave us a typical sly response (no one in Paris is awake at that time). So while we waited for him to come in, we thought we may as well check out the Mona Lisa while we were here. Andrew finally arrived at 10:20 and took us on a sweet tour of Paris (hit up the jewish quarter for an epic falafel, Notre Dame, River Seine, Jim Morrison's Grave). We had booked in a bike tour of the city for that afternoon, Sly tagged along at the back of the pack. Met up with the crew at the Eiffel tower for a picnic dinner before hitting up a Caberet show that night. The Caberet was epic, well worth the money. After the show, a few of us stayed out in the Latin Quarter and ended up having a pretty big night out.

Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland (Day 3 - 5)
The next morning was rough. Our room (Me, Alex, Riley) were among the last to get on the bus. Riley brought half our stuff from the room. Needless to say, the trend of hungover bus trips had started. We arrived in Lauterbrunnen with enough time to sort out some beers, washing, and a wander through the small town to withdraw some Swiss Francs. That night, there was a traffic light party in the bar with another topdeck bus that happened to be in the same campsite for the same night. There was no fridge to keep our beers cold so we ended up chucking them in the river to try keep them cold. Donna and Mark (a couple of Louise's friends) were on the other bus. They also knew Reeves, who was on my bus. Pretty damn small world. This night got loose. Couple of the boys ended up bunking with other cabins cos their room got destroyed.
The next day was rubbish, weather-wise, so we slept til lunch time. The sun came out just after we got up, so we timed that perfectly. A few of us went for a wander along the valley and checked out the waterfalls. Lauterbrunnen has an epic number of waterfalls coming over the cliffs. Trummelbache falls were the most epic - a waterfall inside a cave. We thought it'd be rude not to have some beers again, so we picked up another tray for 10 francs and perched them up in the river. Reeves, Riley and Duncan came up with a sweet game - Beer Races. Basically, you start with ur beers at the top of the creek, drop them in and let them race to the end of the creek. That kick started another night on the beers. Nothing planned that night, so we just hit up the bar and then had some yarns in the cabins til late. The next morning we were packed up and off to the French Rivera.

Nice, France (Day 5 - 7)

Nice was nice. Sunny, warm and beach... pebble beach, but still beach. We got in late afternoon and had a bit of time to go for a wander. Alex and I went for a wander to the beach and then picked up some wine for pre-dinner drinks. Turns out we didn't have as much time as we thought, but between us two, Trav and Tim, we downed the bottle. We had dinner at some local restaurant and then headed out to Wayne's bar which turned out to be one of the biggest nights on the tour... well for me. Don't really remember much too, but sounds like it was a good night out. Everyone was pretty rough the next morning. We didn't really surface til late, but got washing done, and went for a walk to the lookout and along the beach. We had to be back by 4pm to head to Monaco for the evening. Had a dabble in the Sun casino, then paid 10 euro to play with the big boys in the Monte Carlo but got schooled.

Florence, Italy (Day 7 - 9)
We left the French Riviera for Florence, but had a quick stop off at Pisa to check out the Leaning Tower. There was a most original photo comp, so most people spent the time tryna come up with original photos. The comp was judged by Luke and Gabriel (bus driver) at dinner in Florence. The campsite at Florence was the bomb! Pool, supermarket, three restaurants, bar, disco, pretty much everything you can think of. First night in Florence was mad, epic dinner of pizza and pasta, then everyone hit up the bar and disco. Big night out. The next morning, we were all dropped into Florence for a walking tour. Majority of us were hung as shit, but the tour was alright. Had a good lunch and then ended up wandering the streets to find the gelato shop that Luke suggested. Alex started his yarn here about how the sun travels the other way in the sky in the northern hemisphere, which went on for the rest of the day. There was a decent group of us, we checked out the markets, ponte vecchio and a few other sites, before heading back to the camp site. we had to fend for ourselves for dinner, so a few of us just bought up supermarket food and had a picnic for dinner then just chilled having a few wines and playing cards.

Rome, Italy (Day 9 - 11)
We left early for Rome the next morning, so we could squeeze in a walking tour through the main sites in Rome. We stopped at Orvieto on the way in to have a look round and grab a wicked wild boar sandwich. The weather was shit when we got into Rome, but Luke took us on the walking tour anyways. We covered most of the sites in Rome on the tour, but didn't get heaps of time at them. Most of the boyw were frothing for a proper cabonara. This restaurant hooked us up with 7 euro cabonara with a beer. Winning. After lunch we walked to the colosseum, where the walking tour ended. We trained it back to the hotel, stopping for a cheeky maccas stop on the way. That night was fairly chilled, just a few beers, there was an early start the next morning for our Vatican City tour.
The Vatican City was cool, stocked I did it, but was pretty drawn out. I guess if you love the artsy stuff, you would hav frothed, but I think i was too tired to really process it properly. The highlight of the tour was the Sistine Chapel. that place was awesome, Michelangelo did some good work. After the tour, we briefly checked out St Peters Basilica before heading to the colosseum and checking that out properly. There was a themed toga party planned for that night, but unfortunately, there was no other bus at the campsite with us, so it was just our crew dressed up. We still had an epic night and got pretty messy.

Venice, Italy (Day 11 - 13)

Pretty sure a lot of us were still drunk when we got up and on the bus to Venice. We stopped in at Verona enroute to check out Juilet's balcony and grab some more gelato. The campsite in Venice was sweet. There were supposed to be a number of Topdeck buses at the campstie when we were there, this fired up a couple of the boys. There was a masquerade party planned for the second night in Venice, so everyone picked up masks in Venice after our walking tour and gondola boat cruise. Venice was a choice place, canals and small streets winding everywhere. Luke's walking tour took us through most of the sites (St Marks, etc) and then we got on the gondolas and cruised some of the canals. After the boat, me and alex met up with tessa. She had been in venice for a few days, so took us on another wander through the city. I was completely lost, but she seemed to have it down. Found a sweet lil bar and had a few beers there, before boosting back to the crew and heading back for the masquerade party. We started the night playing a few drinking games and mafia. the set up was sweet, all our cabins were facing each other. The masks were awesome and some funny stories came out of that night. The next morning we had to leave early to Austria.

Tirol, Austria (Day 13 - 14)
The masquerade party ended up being a huge night. It was the most hungover, painful bus trip I had on tour. Tried to sleep most of the way to Austria and missed most of the epic scenery that was round. We stopped at the most epic place for lunch. The lunch actually saved me. There was snow about 30m away from where we were perched, but it wasn't that cold. Obviously after lunch, we had a quick snowball fight before we jumped on the bus and drove the last bit before arriving at Tirol. The afternoon was free for people to do their optional activities. Most people went canyoning, some went sky diving and Tim went paragliding. If you didn't do any of them, you could hire a bike and go for a ride, or just chill round the accom. It was a sweet little chilled place. We opted for biking as the other options were expensive as. We started this track that would wind up a mountain, but was too intense for most of us - especially me in the state i was in, so we flagged and went on an easier bike along the river. Alex and Dylan stayed back and tried to climb the hill. We had to be back for a big group photo at 6pm followed by an epic BBQ dinner. After dinner, we started up a NZ vs Aus game of touch. Kiwis killed the aussies, 5-2, although they'll claim they won from "last try wins". Typical Aussies.

Prague, Czech (Day 14 - 16).
The drive to Prague was long, but no one was really hungover at all so relatively painless. We stopped off at the Mauthausen concentration camp for a look. Pretty incredible some of the stuff that went down here. After that, we jumped on the bus and headed to Prague. There was one more stop along the way, so we could pick up some Czech Crown. That night, Luke took us on a boozey walking tour into Prague and then we finished up at the biggest night club in Europe - a 5 storied building with different music on each floor. This was the night the infamous game of blackspot occurred. No explanation given, you either know what blackspot is or you don't. The night got rather messy, so it was a slow start to the free day the next morning. Alex and I had to sort out washing, so didn't get into town til after lunch. We checked out the Castle on the hill, Charles bridge, Wenceslas Square, Old town square, all the sites really. We also had time to pop into the casino and alex managed to double his money. The second night in Prague was fairly quiet, some pool and a lil bit of mafia.

Berlin, Germany (Day 16 - 18)

Berlin was one of my favourite places on the tour. We stopped off in Dresden and had a look round the town. You can get these chilli currywurst sausages. they come in 7 different levels of spice. 1 is mild, while 7 has a higher scoville rating than pepper spray. Obviously, I had to get the 7. Luke reckons no one is able to finish a 7. I showed him... then suffered. It was pretty hot, not so bad eating it, but the after-burn. few of the boys pitched in some euros to get me to lick the plate clean. I was already on fire, so took the challenge. The rest of the bus trip to Berlin was painful, think my body started shutting down. We stopped at the East Side Gallery - a part of the Berlin wall that artist have been commissioned to paint. It was wicked man, but gutted i didn't find any banksy stuff... probably been painted over. That night, Luke took us down to the Hofbrauhaus where another bus were having a "B" themed party. Only a few of us dressed up - our room (Me, Alex, Trav, Tim) went as bags. The night ended up pretty large - we drank until the hostel bar closed, then went on a mish thru town. Burty turned 21 that day, so he ended up having a huge night. The second day in berlin started with a walking tour through all the sites of Berlin. The tour finished round lunch time and then we headed back to the hostel for a sleep before the pub crawl that night. There were two buses on the pub crawl, but it seemed like our bus dominated the crawl. We only ended up going to 4 pubs, but still managed to be a fairly large night out. There were free shots, at each pub, but no cheap drink deals.

Amsterdam, Netherlands (Day 18 - 20)
The drive to Amsterdam was the longest trip of the tour. We left early and got into Amsterdam late afternoon. We stopped off at some random farm to check out how cheese and clogs are made. The guy there was hard case - very good value. most of the boys picked up some cheese and when we got to the hostel, we had a massive cheese feed. Everyone had booked in for the sex show that night, so we met Luke in the lobby and he walked us into the centre of town and let us grab some dinner. A few of us went ot get frites (fries) and the vending machine food from Febo (croquets, frikkadels, and mini burgers). After that, we still had time to kill, so we hit up the casino. I came out 12 euro up, so i was happy. At 9:30, we hit up the sex show. Was similar to the ping pong show in Thailand, but not as extreme. Was funny seeing some of the crew get up on stage tho. After that, we went for a wander through the redlight district and ended up at a pub. A few of us flagged the pub and hit up a cafe. The others joined later on, but the cafe closed, so we hit up another cafe.

London Crew!

Chinese Crew!

The second day, we started with a bike tour. The bike tour was pretty rubbish - the guide was terrible. The other group had a wicked guide, so we got juted. After the tour, me alex riley and reeves had one of the funniest afternoons every. No more needs to be said, but we saw some pretty crazy stuff go down, e.g. Khalifa, the mountain, the grass people, the queue, bob parker, the man milking a bike, and the NZ auckland store. That night was the last of the tour. We all went for dinner at a chinese restaurant and then went on a river cruise with an open bar. One last night OTP with everyone. After the cruise we all hit up the Pirates bar in Amsterdam. The night was pretty large, but worth it for the last night. Some of the boys stayed in Amsterdam for a couple extra days, while the rest of us got on the bus back to London. We stopped off in Bruges for lunch and a wander round, before heading back to the ferry.
We left Gabriel in Calais and then everyone went their own ways at the Clink hostel.
 
Bath and Stonehenge
8 of us from the crew headed up to Bath to check out the Roman baths and Stonehenge on the Saturday after the trip. Was an expensive trip, but cool to catch up with some of the crew again. The baths were way better than I expected, but stonehenge was a bit of a let down. We did get a good nap on the grass there. In saying that, I'm glad I went and crossed it off the list. It was cool to hang with some of the crew again.







Anyways, that's it for the novel. 3 epic weeks in one blog. There are a lot more stories that will eventually come out, but for now, that's all you get.

Congrats for making it to the end.

Next chapter: Spain. woop!

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!

To Kampuchea and Beyond

Sihanoukville is probably the best place we've been to so far. Probably.

Our direct bus across the border to Sihanoukville via Phnom Penh turned out to be a change of bus in Phnom Penh with a 2 1/2 hour wait. Oh well, bit of time to scope out Phnom Penh before we returned (every cloud...). The bus eventually got to Sihanoukville around 10:30pm. We got taken by a tuk tuk to a hotel/bungalow near the beach. To be honest, it could have been anywhere, we just wanted somewhere to sleep that wasn't on a bus. Was a pretty epic day, so we were pretty exhausted after it. Got picked up at 8:00am in Saigon and eventually arrived in Sihanoukville at 10:30pm. 14 hours. I did manage to smash a book on the journey - Dan Brown "Digital Fortress." Not his best, but OK.

Sihanoukville is one pretty awesome place. Very chilled beach place. We stayed down in the Serendipity Beach area. The beach is lined with bar/restaurants and beach loungers. Tuffy and I found a perch on the beach-side and pretty much didn't move from there for a good 8 hours. Why would you? They bring your food to your lounger; bring your drinks to the lounger; ladies wander to you and massage you if you want; if it's hot, you can just get up and fall in the water. This place is high on the recommendation list. These little kids rock round with coathangers ladened with bracelets. If none take your fancy, they have bags with different coloured threads and will make you one on the spot. They seem innocent enough, but they are damn persistent. From not wanting any, I ended up with three and Asty ended up with 2 and a bookmark (which he's already lost). I got a pretty sweet bracelet with "GEAR" written on it (which I've now lost). Asty got one with "ASTY" in the colours of the ABs. One, this little kid who made our bracelts, kept hassling us about playing games, where if he one, we'd have to pay his price for bracelets, or if we won, we got our price. I beat him in a best of three game of Paper, Rock, Sissors, so ended up with a Cambodian flag for $2. Asty bought a pair of "Oakley" polarised sunnies as well (which broke today).

As the sun goes down, all the restaurants start cranking the BBQ. You can get a BBQ feed of whatever from $3. Pretty legit feed, once you add the salad and fries to the place. We perched up at one restaurant, had our $3 seafood BBQ and our countless beers, and watched the fire dancers do their thing (made even more awesome after we sampled a "Happy Shake". We were pretty leered up by the time we decided to leave, but called into one last bar before the night ended.


Next morning, fairly hung over, we woke up and pretty much boarded our bus back to Phnom Pehn. Joslynn (Canadian girl) gave us a heads up about where to perch in Phnom Penh, so as soon as we got off, we could tell the Tuk Tuk driver where to take us. The tuk tuk driver (Bora, rhymes with Dora) ended up being a sweet chap, who ran tours round Phnom Penh, so we sussed for him to pick us up the next morning to check out the killing fields, tuol sleng (S-21), and some other sites.

Pretty intense shit went down in Cambodia not that long ago. We got to the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek (around 15km South-west of Phnom Penh) and followed an audio-guided tour around the killing fields. Pretty chilling thing. Mass graves everywhere, the biggest held 450 bodies. The big memorial stupa hold the remains of the bodies of the people exhumed. Around 20,000 plus people were executed there and buried across 129 mass graves. some pretty intense stories are told in the audio tour.

After lunch, the intenseness continued when we visited the Tuol Sleng prison (formerly a high school). This was the torture, interrogation, detention centre during the Pol Pot era. People where arrested/caught, interrogated and tortured into confessions (true or untrue) and then sent to Choeung Ek to be executed. It was pretty creepy walking round, looking into rooms that once held thousands of people. There was barbed wire fences covering the higher levels to stop the desperate prisoners from committing suicide. not a nice place at all. When the Vietnam Army finally got to the prison, they found 14 people dead there. These were the last of the people tortured in Tuol Sleng. Their bodies are buried on-site and a memorial has been set up. It was bloody hot inside the buildings, I can't imagine what it would have been like to be kept prisoner in one of those rooms with hundreds of others. One of the famous quotes from that Pol Pot era was "No loss if killed, no gain if kept alive."

We are now in Siam Reap. Picked up at 7:45am, arrived at 4pm. Damn these long-haul busses... i think a traditional Khmer massage is justified!

p.s. photos will be added to photoless posts when i find some decent internet.