It ain't half hot mum!

Just thought I'd let you know that we are 'enjoying' temperatures of 38 degrees!!! Never thought I'd be able to survive such heat but actually it's not too bad if you're as natuarally idle as we are and just lounge about all day long. We will shortly be leaving Thailand's hot season to fly to Australasia's autumn and I'm wondering how we will feel in Tasmania and New Zealand with temperatures below 20 degrees - cold I expect. Bangkok has cheap jumpers for sale and I'm buying one before we leave! Enjoy the spring, those of you that are in the spring part of the world.- Heather

Rosa on Diving

A couple of weeks ago, me and Dad went Scuba diving!!!!! Tee Hee

It was well fun, but it was proper hard as well, like, we had to do this test, (I got 100% by the way, oh and dad got 96% so hahahahahahaha!!!!!!!) and I had to do it on the boat (I get well sea sick) so I had to take pills.

When we went down for the last part of the last dive, I couldn't get down because I had a squeeze in my ear, when you get like air stuck in the passage and it pressurises and hurts really bad, that is ok but thing is I couldn't clear it, so I had to miss that part.

We made friends while we were diving, they were the people who were on the course with us, called Billy and Marta. Billy was American and Marta was Norwegian - they were a couple. So basically I had fun fun fun.

luv yall

rosa

I agree with her

So, this post is a bit like the one just below. It's true - Thailand has just become interesting, now we're about finished here - we've hung around long enough at our guesthouse to have begun to be more-than-just-tourists to the family who work there, and they invited us out to the countryside with them yesterday - we got to sit and eat home cooking amongst the longan orchards, and then go bamboo rafting. This last is a standard tourist activity, but we got to do it with Thais - much more fun. We saw some sedate rafts of tourists - our two rafts were engaged in an on-off battle of getting everybody wet and preferably knocking them into the water, for the whole 90 minutes, joined in with by various Thai complete strangers we passed along the way. Then back to the guest house to change, and to take various young people out for pizza and ice-cream. And today we've been bowling with some of the same people: photos will appear in due course.

Now I like this place - and not mainly for ice-cream and bowling. I think we've relaxed into the culture just enough to be able to be relaxedly friendly with people - we've been shopping for my sister-in-law's shop while we've been here, and I think I'll have to use that as an excuse to come back here in April sometime, when they have a whole three-day festival devoted to chucking water at each other and laughing a lot.

The other thing I've been really enjoying is yoga. I've never properly warmed to yoga before - been to classes a few times, sure it's a good thing, but it always seemed just a little ... po-faced? I've been to five classes in the last week at the Yoga Studio with a guy called Adam who is fun, stretching, but also very good at offering alternatives for those of us with tight bits, and encouraging people to use the various bits of padding and support that are available. I like it.

Yesterday was the first anniversary of my gran's death - she practised yoga for many years and it was a real shame when she could no longer get out to classes - it was good to be able to go to a yoga class myself, and think of her.

- Mark

Real Thailand at last!

Yesterday we had a great time! We were invited to go to the house of the family who work at our guest house gerat and Nui. they have two children Fanta (girl) who is 15 and Moodang (boy) who is 12. We went out into the countryside to their house and there were lots of other relatives there. we ate lovely food and then went off bamboo rafting. The Thais were full of fun and we got very wet! Lots of splashing and being very silly. Even the Thais we met along the way - that we didn't know - splashed us and everyone had a jolly time - plenty of screaming from Rosa and falling in the water from Melissa and Rosa. We then went back to the house for more hospitality, playing with puppies (of course), picking longans (fruits) and cotton pods. When we got back to our guest house we took Fanta, Moodang and Pom (a girl from Bangkok) out for pizza and haagan daz ice cream.

We had a great day and feel so happy that we have finally made some proper friends here and found out how great Thailand can be.

We got some good photos that Mark will add later.- Heather

Coming to the end of Thailand

Hi all this is my first blog for ages it seems. If you are in my mailbox then you will have recived this as an email and don't need to bother reading it.

Thailand has been interesting and not really what I expected.

Expectation: Bangkok would be really horrible, polluted, full of sex tourists and noisy and dirty.

My experience: great fun, lots to see and do, big, bustling city with ancient and modern living side by side, sex tourism not as all pervasive as I had imagined and mostly confined to certain areas.

Expectation: islands would be idyllic, restful and a great place to chill out for a few weeks.

My experience: islands beautiful - but no more than Kerala, and full of tourists and expensive - not very relaxing and not very Thai -most people there are working in the tourist trade and a lot of them are Burmese anyway - very few people going about 'ordinary' life. Probably would be great if you are escaping work for two weeks and just want to collapse, rejuvenate, soak up the sun and the (relatively) cheap food, accommodation etc. but not the most stimulating or interesting of places for us at this point in our adventure.

Expectation - Everyone that I know that has been to Thailand has loved it and I expected that I would too.

My experience - I haven't loved it! I've certainly really enjoyed a lot of the things we've done - meeting up with my sister and nephew and mother-in-law, meeting nice Thais, meeting elephants, snorkeling, eating delicious food, seeing beautiful scenery, buying lovely clothes etc etc, but I haven't really developed a love of the place and wouldn't particularly want to come back. The 'sex tourism', or just seeing old white blokes with beautiful young Thai girls all the time, definitely is off putting and rather depressing and even besides that the relationship between farangs (foreigners) and Thais/Thailand just feels exploitative and colonial and I don't feel very comfortable with it but not in a way that I can really put my finger on or articulate. Strangely I didn't feel the same in India - which is an ex-colony but maybe it's because Western tourism isn't such a big deal there, or maybe I'm just prejudiced towards India and nowhere will ever compare!

We are staying now in a nice Northern city "Chaing Mai", not doing too much in the way of excursions or major activities (mostly through lack of funds) but it is great. We have been doing some regular 'home education' here and swimming, yoga, salsa, eating nice food, making some Thai friends (at last!) and some non-Thai friends too, watching films and generally taking it easy and getting into a nice routine.

Anyway we are now in our last week here and gearing up for the move to Australia and New Zealand. The girls have bought jeans and trainers and are very concerned to 'look the part' - a worry they haven't had too much whilst we have been in the developing world. All of a sudden they want 'trendy clothes'. We are looking forward, very much, to staying with Mark's Aunt and her family (two girls around ours' age) and then on to NZ to stay with a lovely family we met in India - they also have similar aged children so Melissa and Rosa are really looking forward to that. After three weeks there and one in California with one of Mark's old college friends we are off to Mexico and are beginning to brush up our Spanish - only 6 weeks there and then two in Jamaica and two in Cuba and then we are home!!!! Can't believe it - it's going so fast and I am NOT ready to go home yet!

Hope you are all well and happy - for those of you who are Europe based, it's Spring hooray and the weather must be improving. It's really been great for me being able to keep in touch with you all and even getting many responses back - I'm sure its helped me to avoid the terrible home-sickness that I generally get when I'm away. So keep in touch and let me know your news and views.

Must go swimming now with family and Fanta, the 15 year old Thai friend that the girls have made

lots of love

- Heather

More stuff to see

I've finished bingeing! There are loads and loads of newly posted photos and quite a few newly posted words below this post - all the way back to Feb 11th, so scroll down and take a look. Here's one more photo, taken with the disposable underwater camera, just for fun.

        - Mark

Mind of a Binge Blogger

OK, so I haven't blogged much recently. It's time to catch up.

I've emptied the cameras onto the hard-drive of a local internet cafe, selected and shrunk pics for the blog, drafted lots of short blogs with pictures from our time in Bangkok with Jo (I'm that far behind - I uploaded those photos to photobucket already, just didn't have time to link them all into blog entries), processed the disposable underwater camera film from diving - now I just have to spend eight hours uploading the new pictures, typing in notes I made earlier, coding all the picture-links with witty or at least vaguely relevant captions, laying out pages and deciding what order to post the blog entries in, fixing bugs, writing up what we've actually done this last three weeks, and then writing something to have at the top of the blog to let our beloved readership know where to find all the new pictures and words.

Bliss...

OK I admit it - I'm a binger. I can stay in control of it for a while, just relaxing, being with the family, meeting locals, getting to know a place - then I just find myself sitting for too long typing at a computer in some internet joint, enjoying the thrill as the USB connections do their job, patting myself on the back when the latest tweak to the technology works, or I find a way round the awkward set-up on this particular computer. It's sick and sad I know - but there it is. I'll try just to blog a little every day or two from now on, honest I will. Just as soon as I get this pile of photos and experiences properly stored on the internet and safe from the harm that memory and real life might do to them ...

- Mark

Back to the North

A night on a train, a day in Khao San Road, and another night on a train have brought us back up here to mellow Chang Mai.

After recovering from that little epic, we're settling happily into the Kavil Guesthouse again - five pounds a night for our two rooms, and lovely food over the road for about two pound fifty for four good meals.

We've met up again with Mike, a Yorkshireman now living in Thailand as much as he can, whom we met last time we were up here - he's a nice guy, who speaks Thai, knows the town well, and will even come with us to Salsa classes.

When all else fails, there's cheap internet access here - and there's always the swimming pool round a corner or two:

We're certified!

After five hours in a pool, followed by our first two ocean dives the next day, it was a bit of a relief when we couldn't do our last two dives the following day, as planned. Even though this meant staying around (relatively) expensive Ao Nang for a few more days until there was another dive trip to Phi Phi, it did give us a chance to recover from the unaccustomed hard work:

By Thursday, we were ready to go - and the magic of seasickness pills ensured we enjoyed our three-hour boat trip to the first dive site.

On with the kit, and down we went:

The first dive took us to 18 metres or so below the surface, with 20-25m visibility and a beautiful reef to float about (after we'd done our skills tests) - lobsters, a moray eel, and all kinds of fish. But the underwater disposable camera didn't like the lack of light - so no good photos, sorry!

Then lunch, as the boat took us round the corner of Phi Phi Ley to The Beach (as used in the film, The Beach) - Hollywood may have messed it about, but it looked like the tsunami had pretty much cleaned it up:

Here, we swam and snorkelled and played with the fishes:

Our final dive (for now) was less deep, and a few of the photos weren't underexposed. Sadly, the bit where we floated inside a huge school of silverfish in the mouth of a cavern, the school forming ribbons and swirls around us (my favourite bit of diving yet, I think) was just too dark.

This was my favourite dive so far, all together, with a real feeling of weightlessness and wonder. Rosa got a 'squeeze' (pain on descending) in her ear after we'd done our controlled emergency swimming ascent test, and couldn't clear it, so she had to sit out the last ten minutes of our last dive on the boat :-(

Which still doesn't excuse her getting 100% on the 'exam' we did on the boat on the way back, when I only got 96% ...

Anyway, we are both now certified open-water scuba divers, planning to take Peter S. up on his offer to take us to Stoney Cove when we're home, and hoping to be able to afford another dive or two in Mexico. Many thanks to our long-suffering instructor, Brian from Scotland (and England) - and to our fellow students, Marta and Billy from Norway and California:

- Mark

Meanwhile, on dry land ...

Hi everyone, how are you? Well we are in Ao Nang, Krabi Province at the moment, having a really good time - we have not really done much, we have really just been on the beach and swimming in the pool, which we pay 40 baht a day for, while rosa and mark do a scuba diving course. We are going to leave here in a couple of days, we are off back up to chang mai which I hope will be good. I bet it will, we have only a couple of weeks left, well one month left here.

It's been really nice to see jo and shay and zander, hope they like seeing us! Had some fun times with them, hope you all are doing well because we are. Hope its not too hot there, because its cold here (heheheheheh) anyway luvya loads.

- melissa

Catching-up, as the diving begins

It's been a busy time: and this post begins busily with lots of links to little blog entries about it - most with photos now. Use the back button to return to this entry if you click a link.

After our Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai trips, Diane left us to head off into Laos (jealous, us?) to buy even more lovely things for the shop, and we flew back to Bangkok to meet Jo, my mum, who arrived the day before my birthday. It was great to see her, and holidaying with her gave us a chance to tour around more of Bangkok, including the Grand Palace, and to go and be tourists on the beautiful, if somewhat boring, Ko Tao. Here we snorkelled (again, for three of us) - this time losing our breakfasts rather than skipping them - and it was very, very beautiful. But no underwater camera, so no pictures ...

Meanwhile, lots of people have been helping H and me, via email, with our application to job-share being Visionaries for a Just and Peaceful World for five years from this summer - which would be pretty great timing. Thanks to all who commented - small sub-edits, queries about key concepts, and general encouragement and enthusiasm were all invaluable - the application is now sent off (glad to see the back of it!) and our fingers are crossed. Particular thanks to mum, who took the girls off our hands so that we could work on it, as well as couriering our signatures home, printing and posting the final thing and commenting usefully too.

We saw mum off from Ko Samui - crowded, big, expensive. Bo Phut was pretty though, and is near the only disc golf course in SE Asia - I was gutted not to have time or money to play ...

While the journey to Samui was nauseating, the ferry to Surat Thani on the mainland was much smoother, so we changed our plan to stay over in Surat and looked for a bus leaving to Phuket - but we'd missed the last one. There was a bus to Krabi going in ten minutes, though, if we were interested ...? So here, perhaps, we became true travellers, jumping on the first bus to wherever was available, changing plans at the drop of a hat, pausing only to pee and buy pineapples.

"Krabi: lively town, lovely people," says the slogan, and the second is true, but Tsunami Fear has emptied the place of tourists this year - which means it's quite and hugely cheap. We've come to the Andaman coast to claim my reward to myself for wrestling with the job application - a four-day open water PADI scuba diving course. This turns out to have been a dumb move - the courses are still lots cheaper on Ko Tao, tsunami or no tsunami.

I liked Krabi - it's not really a tourist town (though it has its tourist streets), more of a supply town for a large rural population. We saw children on their way out of school being catered for by eight or ten food stalls, selling sweet pancakes with sausages in them, tiny portions of chicken and chips, squash drinks and so on. But Ao Nang, half an hour's drive away, got a higher rating from the non-dive students (now just Heather and Mo, as Rosa is going for it too), who after all have to hang about in it much more, so we're here. Our huge air-conditioned rooms with hot shower, TV and fridge cost less than our cold water, fan rooms in Ko Tao - last night we even rented a DVD player to check out some of the many available pirate DVDs.

If you're looking for a spring holiday, the Andaman coast is definitely open for business. Most tourist places were clean (and free of bodies) within a week of the big wave, many within a day or two - only Ko Phi Phi and Khao Lak are still a bit of a mess, and there are posters asking for volunteers on Phi Phi, so we may check that out. There are low season numbers of tourists, with high season weather and facilities, and a mixture of high season and real bargain prices - I would guess that there are still cheap packages here to be bought from the UK, too. It's very first world stylee just here in Ao Nang - smooth clean new pavements and roads, MacDonalds, no rubbish, lots of Italian food, no shack dwellings, no loose animals, no beggars - but there are lots of other options up and down the coast.

We started our dive course yesterday: three hours of video to watch, going over the three chapters in the book we've already read, and then quizzes and chatting about all the same stuff. Today should be less boring - only two hours of video this morning, and then five hour-long pool sessions this afternoon, putting it all into practice. We'll let you know how it goes ...

- Mark

Diving course begins!

Today we have been and booked Mark and Rosa onto a four day diving course - this qualifies them to dive after we leave Thailand too - but will they ever be able to afford it?! Me, Rosa and Melissa decided that we didn't want to dive - me and Rosa because of the sea sickness issue and Melissa because she is scared. Mark has wanted to do it though and we thought it would be a nice reward for him for finishing the job application that we have just done (hooray it's finished!!!).

We trecked off to Ao Nang - the nearest beach resort to Krabi town - to look for a cheap diving course and some nice accomodation for us to stay in whilst Mark did it. Well cheap dive courses there were not - apparantly the cheapest and best place to learn to dive is on Ko Tao, where we've just come from! - but we did find a place that gave very nice free accomodation with the price of the dive and at the last minute Rosa decided to go for it and so she and Mark start tomorrow. They have their little books to study and tomorrow is just theory but then they will practise in a swimming pool and then two days of diving in the sea. Meanwhile Melissa and me will live in the lap of luxury with air con, TV, fridge, lovely beach and more shops than fleas on a dog! - oh yes and the highlight for her - a Macdonalds just up the road - well we haven't been in one for at least three months so maybe we'll have to try it.

On the subject of food (one of my favorite subjects in case you hadn't noticed) we ate in a really nice Indian resterant tonight - Thai foood is good but it's nice to have a change now and again - nice guy from Bangalore and really good food - much nicer than the one in Bangkok - yum!!!

It is high season here but very quiet as a result of the tsunami - people are struggling to make a living, doesn't seem to be resulting in cheaper prices though - sadly for us - but at least it's not packed out - which is very nice for us - but not for them!

We hear it's snowing in England - enjoy it, the temperature here was 32 degrees today and that's well hot!- Heather

Hi from Krabi

Hi all,

Thailand's great - I haven't blogged or emailed so much as I might recently because Heather and me have been working on a job application (believe it or not!) for when we get back, and my mum's been with us for a week and a bit, so I've been spending lots of time catching up with her. We've been North, now South - we were over in the Gulf of Thailand, and now we've just arrived on the Andaman Coast (quiet, because the tourists all think its a disaster scene, but actually all cleared up and very much open for business in many places - being here we get cheap prices for things, and we're helping them get back on their feet too by spending our cash here).

We'll be here for four days to a week while I do a diving course (I tried to get the others interested, but they're all happier snorkelling apparently), then back up to the cheap and cool north until the end of March, when we're heading to Australia for ten days, then New Zealand for ten days, California for a week, Mexico for six weeks, Cuba for a fortnight, Jamaica for a fortnight and then home! Can't believe we're so far through already. Off to bed now - we left Ko Samui at 1:30 this afternoon and got to Krabi at 9pm will blog more again v soon.

- Mark

Goodbye Jo!

Today Jo has left and we all should be leaving with her to go to Ko Samui to see her off, but Rosa is sick so her and me have stayed behind and Mark and Melissa have gone.

It's been really lovely having Jo with us and of course it wasn't long enough (I said that all along!). We had a lovely and horrible day yesterday - we went on a snorkelling day and had some great times snorkelling around the island, seeing incredible fish and coral and getting more tanned (and red) than we have to date. Horrible because me, Rosa and Mark were all extremely sea sick at times and Rosa got very sick when we got back - also we all acquired some painful coral cuts, very small but sore and prone to infection.

It was a shame that Jo's last night with us was a low key affair as me and Mark took turns to sit with Rosa and we couldn't venture away from our hotel. It was great to have another friendly person around and we had some very good times together and also good to have someone else around to talk about our 'job application' with. We've almost finished it now and are looking forward to signing it off in the next week so that we can get back to wholeheartedly relaxing! Mark, Jo and Melissa took some fantastic photos and they will go up in due course.

Jo says that snow is predicted in the UK on Tuesday - enjoy it! We're enjoying tropical sunshine and finally getting a little tanned!- Heather

Ko Tao photos

On Ko Tao we stayed in clean, new rooms near a pretty beach:

Jo caught a plane back to Bangkok from Ko Samui - which wasn't our favourite place, but had it's compensations: