Our first day in Perth and Jamie's Birthday.

We're now in a Internet cafe near our Hostel in Perth.
We are spending 6 nights in Perth, we arrived on the 22nd and we are going to Bali on the 28th.
Our flight was scheduled at 0:05am, which was 5 minutes into Jamie's 18th birthday.
As Jamie boarded the aircraft, I asked the flight attendant if he could have a special announcement. I wrote down his name and age and she read it out on the plane as we were about to take off.
When we arrived, Ben's dad picked us up from the airport and drove us to his friends house near Mandurah, Perth. We had landed at 5:30 am, and by the time we were near to the house it was around 7am, we were hungry and David (Ben's Dad) bought us a "Hungry Jacks" breakfast meal.

It was our first experience of the "Hungry Jacks". It was another fast food to add to the many in our "Tried, tested and used many times collection". Hungry Jacks is an Australian Fast food chain similar to Burger King. However, the breakfast wrap goes down a treat :).
We hadn't managed to get any sleep on the "Air Asia" flight as there wasn't much leg room and the seats weren't wide enough to fit my fatness. (suppose that's what you expect from a budget airline). Due to our lack of sleep, we arrived at the house, met Ben's family, ate our hungry Jacks from the hungry Jacks Drive thru' and went up to bed to get a few hours kip.

David woke us up around 1ish and we then went out to see some of the local wildlife.
We drove out to find a Kangaroo, and it wasn't long before a Kangaroo was spotted. We got quite up-close took a few snaps, recorded them on film and then drove to see Ben's dads new house next to a local golf course.

The weather in Perth was abit chilly. Reaching 11 degree's at night and dipping to around 3 degree's in the day. When we went to some of the local shops in Mandurah I purchased an Australian Jumper. It was only $25, which is around 13 pounds. A bargain in comparison to prices we have found elsewhere in Perth. It has certainly kept me warm since we've been here.

We headed back to the house and David stuck the Barbeque on where we enjoyed steak, Lamb and sausage sarnies and a couple of beers to celebrate Jamie's birthday. After the bbq, the lights were out and Ben brought a cake out to Jamie, lit with 18 candles which they had bought for him when we were out. we were then taken to a local Irish pub where me, Jamie, Ben and his dad had a few drinks and a singsong on the Karaoke.
I had a shot at a couple of songs and we also had a group boogie singing The Proclaimer's "500 miles" at the top of our voices, whilst marching on the spot, enjoying ourselves in front of quite a large audience and also people dancing away to our beautiful quartet.

It was a great day, we all enjoyed ourselves and Jamie had a great birthday.
We will be updating the blog about our other days in Perth soon.!

Picture Update:

Now we have taken a few snaps recently but have been unable to upload them due to dodgy internet connections in Thai internet cafe's but here is a selection to catch up on the last week or so.

A Night Out: Khao San Road, Bangkok

'Sangsom Buckets' 150 Baht were drunk while listening to live acoustice music on a street bar.

We met some friends afer a Bucket or two. Two Irish Boys travelling wth there friends who has a tale or two to tell. Also a group recently qualified Doctors who were interesting to chat with.

The Grand Palace: Central Bangkok. A change of clothing was needed to cover up our legs before entering the Temlples.

We took a longtail boat around the canal/river to discover a different side of Bangkok. We saw many Shanty towns and areas of poverty.

Chang Mai: Pad Thai Cookery School





One of many activites we took part in in Chang MaI





Pad Thai was one of the first dishes which we prepared and cooked. However the consumption of the noodles using chop sticks was a little tricker.

We each had our own work station when cooking. It helped that there was only three of us in the class so we could stop and start for picture and video purposes.

As part of the course we all had a go at flaming onions in a wok, quite dangerous but it is Thailand so its ok. The oil was heated up until it was smokey and then the water and onion combinaion was added to ignite.

We all agreed it was well worth it for a good photo!

Ben's flame was definately the biggest, with it almost looking as if he had caught fire.

After completing our five dishes we recieved our certificates and recipe books, being referred Masterchef's (don't know how true that was)

Saturday Night: Chang Mai

First we headed for the Thai boxing area and ordered a couple of cocktails and beer.

Joe vs Thai Bar Women, Pool Competition. Double or nothing resulted in a free round of drinks for us all avoided a 200 Baht bet the bar owner.

In the Thai Boxing Ring: Obviously when the match had finished. One of the free drinks ended up on Joe's T-Shirt and Lap= Clumsy Joe.

A recovery was needed the next day so we paid a tuk tuk to take us no a tour of three temples. I haven't forgotten the names of each.

After the tour had finished we had befriended the tuk tuk driver and refferred to him as a cuddly bear. Feeling slightly better we visited the Sunday Night market.

Steak Night!

1 Day Trekking



Our 1 day trekking involved, ! hour walk through the jungle to a waterfall. An Elephant Ride, White water/Bamboo rafting

"Lets get ready to ramble, lets get ready to walk"

We reached the water fall safely to find it was very cold water.

Although we were quite thankful for a refreshing splash after a sweating walk through the Jungle.

Elephant riding

We chose to sit on the roof rack for a short journey to our activities. We were transported across the river in a caged zip wire.

Our 6 nights were up Chang Mai so it was off to the Airport for our Flight to Perth.

"Chang Mai, What a place!"

Overlook on Chiang Mai

We are now sat in "The Coffee Bean", a cafe in Kuala Lumpur LCCT airport.
It has some free internet access that likes to cut off but it gives me an opportunity to finally update the blog.

We have now spent our 6 nights in Chiang Mai and are on our way to Perth in Australia.
Chiang Mai has been fantastic, we have had a great balance of relaxing in our hotel and also going out to explore Chiang Mai and the activities that we took part in.

The last blog post from Chiang mai was on our first full day, the first impression we received was great, and this impression stuck with us as it was definately the best place out of all the places we have stayed at.

There was so much to see, so much to do and it was so cheap in relation to the rest of thailand/Malaysia that we visited.
I got my hair shaved for 90 baht, which is around 1 pounds 70. Cheap as chips, well you can't get chips over here.. but if you could they would probably be the cheapest chips in the world. Also the worst, as they don't cook western food very well. I actually had chips here, and they were overcooked and not as good as the home made ones :)
Later on, Jamie got his hair shaved too, continuing the short hair cut which I am going to stick with, as its easy to manage and doesn't require as much shampoo which is too expensive over here.
Ok, I appear to be waffling on, as per usual :D
On our second full day in Chiang mai we did an activity which we had booked the previous day. The activity was called ATV (Not American Television which I first thought it was when looking at the brochure, but All Terrain Vehicle), which was a quadbiking trek. Basically, we got picked up from our hotel by a mini-bus which had other people on it who were also taking part in the trip. We were then taken to a quadbiking centre where we got lessons on how to work the quadbikes, got given the safety equipment and were then taken in convoy by the Thai Quadbike man, and headed for the mountains, which were 1100 metres high. Which gave us a fantastic view and we drove them through local villages which was great to see, as we saw alot of poverty. The trip was fun, it was a 42km (25 mile) quadbike journey taking around 3-4 hours, but was definately worth doing as it was a highlight of our whole trip and was an exciting day.
After taking part in this activity we couldn't wait to book another trek.
We then later that night booked a Thai cooking course for the next day.
The Thai cooking course was fantastic! We booked it for the evening so we could eat the Thai food we cooked for our tea. We were the only 3 people on the course. The people who were also booked to do it on that day obviously found out that we were going so they cancelled, which was a good choice.  The Thai Lady taking the course was called Meow, which was fun and when teaching us how to cook Thai food she spoke to us as if there was a huge group which was funny, even though there was only three of us there.
When cooking the main course, Chicken Curry with cashew nuts we even created a MasterChef style flame from the frying pan, making the experience even more enjoyable.
It was a five course dinner, which was great to cook and we were there for around 3 hours. We had aprons at the ready, Ben in Pink, Jamie in Blue and I was also in a beautiful Pink coloured apron.
That night we got back to our hotel around half 9 and went out to watch some Thai boxing in a square near some of the local bars. The boxing was fantastic, Thai boxing is kickboxing and there was quite a crowd. We got some good seats, I got a Chang Beer, Ben and Jamie got a cocktail and we sat and watched a few fights whilst really enjoying the experience.
The next day was a more relaxing day, we had a lie in which was nice and then went out to visit some of the traditional Thai temples in Chiang Mai. A man outside our hotel in a Thai “Tuk-tuk” offered to take us to the temples, and wait for us at each one. The price was 100 baht each (just short of two pounds) which was relatively cheap as we then had transport to take us to all the temples booked and meant that visiting the temples was possible in only a couple of hours rather than taking longer if we had to sort out transport to and from each temple.
The day after (yesterday) we booked another activity day. This one was the one we were most excited for. It was a one day adventure tour which consisted of the pickup and drop off to our hotel, Elephant trekking, a waterfall walk, white water rafting and bamboo rafting.
We were supposed to be picked up at 8:15am, so we got ourselves up at 7am, went down to breakfast got ready and waited outside to be picked up. The trip cost 700 baht (14 pounds each) and we had put down a deposit of 300 baht each. We had never had any trouble waiting for pick up for any previous activities as they all seem to be pretty much on time. We waited and waited, made a few calls (which were not answered) to the tour agency and the pickup was nowhere to be seen. After an hour, we realized that they weren’t coming so we decided to walk to see the lady who we booked it with to see what was going on. The lady had mistakenly booked us in for the previous day, however put the 20th onto our deposit receipt, she then apologized and organized for us transport to catch up to the group who luckily had only visited the “Orchard farm” (the part we weren’t too fussed about visiting) and we then headed to the elephant trekking place where we were going to go on the elephants.
We got to the elephant trekking place, had a water and then were told we were going to firstly do the waterfall walk instead and do the elephant trekking later. It worked out better, as the three best activities were left until last.
We had a half an hour walk to the waterfall, which was very similar to the Ingleton waterfall walk in North Yorkshire, the waterfall was really nice, and had a good plunge pool to have a quick dip. After our refreshing, waterfall bathe we then received our lunch, which was noodles in leaf wrapped packaging. It was tasty, I couldn’t eat using chop sticks but it was still yummy.

The next part of the activity was elephant trekking, which was incredible. It was great to see the Elephants up close, feed them bananas and ride them.
Due to the fact we weren’t officially booked for the trek on that day (thanks to the organized tour agency lady) there wasn’t enough Elephants for everyone. This meant that Jamie, Ben and I had to ride on other peoples Elephants, however they were still on them. Basically, there is a seat on the top of the Elephants back that other members on the group were sat on, however we didn’t sit on the seat, we sat on the Elephants neck! It was extremely scary but incredibly fun as the elephant could reach us with its trunk. I had a big bunch of Bananas which made me make friends with my “Dumbo” however, as often as I called him Dumbo, he didn’t fly! Shouting “Come on Dumbo” did amuse the others, and we made good friends with the rest of the bunch.
After we rode the elephant’s we then went White water rafting which was incredibly fun! Geared up and ready to ride the rapids, we went in a raft with an instructor and half of the adventure trekking group. We followed all kinds of commands to paddle forward, backward. Stop paddling, dive right in the raft, left in the raft, all get to the front/back which made it funny when you are with a group you have just met. It was really enjoyable, we got soaked but we were in our swimming stuff so it was all good, and very good fun. After the white water rafting we climbed onto a bamboo raft. The group had to sit down on the raft and the instructor who called me “One-man” picked me to be the raft stander-upper and powerer. (I had to poke the bamboo stick left/right to make the raft move). It was fun, and being called One-Man was also a funny experience.
When we got back we knew it was time for food, a trip to the night market and then bed for our flight to Australia the next day (Today). We got up this morning, went down to breakfast (where I had chicken tikka masala), packed and checked out on our voyage to Perth Australia.
We flew from Chiang Mai to Kuala Lumur are we currently waiting in Kuala Lumpur airport, waiting for our flight to Perth, Australia in 3 hours time. We are incredibly excited to see Perth, it will make a change from our travels around South-east asia, however it is going to be something different, and it will also be the first time (like many other places) we have been to Australia. We have already sorted out the Visa’s so we are hoping that everything is in place making our travels as smooth as possible.
When we get to the airport, Ben’s dad is going to pick us up and take us to his house where we are going to be staying for a few nights in Perth.

Again, a lengthy update but you should now be upto date with most of our trip so far. It has been fantastic, we are all loving it, and we still have over 2 weeks left to chill out and look forward to Perth and Bali

Picture Update: ATV Quad Biking Day

Day 3 in Ao nang...

A lazy start at Aqua Marine saw us first hit the pool after a good breakfast.
We had all made the decision to get a short hair cut, which we thought would be wise due to heat and extra hair resulting in extra sweating. So we headed out from the hotel to find a barbers/salon and came across one relatively easily on the main stretch of Ao nang. With a little wait the electric razor was ready with the number two clipper selected.
The hair dresser was rapid. She did not mess about getting rid of the hair. Before we knew it the hair was on the floor and we left into the afternoon sunshine with a smart short cut.
Next we hit the beach where initially we were approached by the obvious 'Massage?' question with prices at 150 baht, less than 3 quid for an alo vera massage it was hard for Joe to resist. After soaking up some of the sun and paying a visit to the fruit man for some sweet and juicy pineapple we headed back to the hotel which was a short tuk tuk ride away.
We shortly realised that we were a bit behind on a accomadation and needed a place to kip for Ko Phangen and Ko Samui in the next few days. A hungry visit to an internet cafe to book our next accomodation was followed by a pleasant evening meal.
We all chose pizza's as a refreshing change from all of the spicy thai food. Joe decided on a American Hot Pizza. When it arrived he knew he was in trouble with the pizza topping coated in different types of chilli's, big, small, hot, seedy. The consumption of the meal involved extensive sweating and hotness of lips, mouth and throat by Joe but he accomplished the dish well. Jamie and Ben sat in amazement as his lips hugged a bottle of iced water for the rest of the night. One thing is for sure, he was not looking forward to his bowel movements for the next few days.

3 nights in Bangkok, now in Chiang Mai

The last post was written by Jamie, in Ao Nang, Krabi (also updated today).
After Krabi, we moved to Koh Samui for 3 nights, then stayed in Bangkok for 3 nights and have now arrived in Chiang Mai.

The internet (and time) has been hard to find since Krabi, and with a 6 night relaxing stay in Chiang Mai (northern Thailand), I have a good hour spare to give the Blog an update and upload a few pictures aswell.

So, starting with Ko Samui. We spent the first of the three nights on the islands off the east coast at Koh Phangan. Koh Phangan is the host of the "Full moon party", a huge on beach party for young people like ourselves. 30000 people have been known to attend the party and we were all looking forward to seeing what it was like and experience a big beach party atmosphere.
When we were getting to Koh phangan, we first flew from Krabi airport to Koh Samui (we stayed on Koh Samui on the final two nights on the islands). We then got a ferry from Koh Samui to Koh Phangan. Jamie was looking a little ill on the travels, starting feeling slightly feverish on the flight to Koh Samui. By the time we were on the boat to Koh Phangan, Jamie was starting to feel quite ill. The best thing for us, was to get to our accommodation that night on Koh Phangan and stay in, so Jamie could rest which in the end helped him as the next day he was fresh and feeling a million times better. We put it down to "Eating foreign foods" as he felt ill and had a headache. In the end, we missed the full moon party and spent the night in, which allowed us all to recharge which is funny to look back on because out of any of us, Jamie was the one most looking forward to the party.
The next day, Jamies headache had disappeared and we headed for a ferry to Koh Samui.
Our hotel in Koh Samui was like a hut, there was a swimming pool and it reminded me of Centerparcs, the style of accommodation, however ours only cost 12 pounds a night which included breakfast which was a bargain considering the location. Koh samui was nice, our hotel was central to a beach called Lamai beach which was busy and had a few bars and restaurants which was a nice area to chill out for the couple of nights we had in Koh Samui before we flew to Bangkok.
From what we found on the two islands, transport was very expensive in relation to the other places we had visited. The islands were heavily populated with "Westerners" and I think this had a huge reflection on the price.
We had our flight booked for Bangkok when we were in Phuket. It was cheap enough and was a quick way of getting from Samui to Bangkok (well it should have been). The flight (as per usual with the low cost budget airlines) was delayed (3 hours!) which was a lovely wait, as it meant we were actually in the airport for 5 hours. We met two girls from Canada who had just graduated from university, who were talking to us which made the wait seem shorter. They were telling us about there travels and finds so far, and we shared some stories with them about what we have also come across within the last 3 weeks of our travels. We were scheduled to arrive in Bangkok at 20:40 however we actually arrived around 23:00. The pilot caught up some time as the flight seemed quicker than it should.
We got our baggage from the baggage reclaim and got a taxi to the hotel.
Our hotel was close to "Kao San Road" which was a main road in Bangkok which was great being close by.
We had three nights in Bangkok, so two full days which we designated to one day in the "New bit" and one day in the "old part" of Thailand's Capital city.
On our first day we visited MBK shopping centre. Which is a huge shopping centre in the city centre. It has many floors and each floor is huge, it is definitely the biggest shopping centre I have ever been in and it had floors of markets aswell as floors of shops. The top floor had an arcade with a ten-pin bowling alley and a cinema complex. We spent a little while on the floor as we had a good play with the arcade machines and went for a game of bowling.
The bowling scores were in:
Jamie first - 126
ben Second - 76
Joe last - 71.

I would rate my bowling performance as appalling and I would like to blame in on the heat (even though the sun in Bangkok was hidden throughout our stay).

On the first night we went to Khao san road, had a meal and spent a night watching live music with other people who are "traveling" like ourselves. The popular drink was the Bucket, which was tasty and refreshing, the drink was called Samson which was different but nice and basically lasted for the duration of our stay at that outside bar.
We got back that night, had a good sleep and woke up the following day ready to see the temple attractions of Bangkok. We first of all visited the Grand palace which was beautiful, inside of the Grand Palace is a Buddhists temple with the Emerald Buddha. We had to hire long trousers and take our shoes off for when we went inside the temple. We were also not allowed to point our feet towards the Buddha, which meant we had to sit on the floor (some people kneeling, some people relaxed facing forward with feet facing backwards). We weren't allowed to take photographs inside the grand palace however we took plenty of pictures outside and have got some amazing memories about the temple itself. After viewing many sights in the Grand palace we headed towards the Golden Buddha which was a fair distance from the Palace.
The golden buddha was a taxi ride away, a few kilometres and a very cheap price using the "Taxi-meter". We found that you have to use the meter, as if you don't the prices that the taxi drivers quote are extremely unreasonable. Using the meter is cheaper and a fairer way of getting a good price for using the many available taxi's and Tuk Tuk's available.
When we got to the Golden buddha, we found it was closed for refurbishment. We still got a good sight but we couldn't go into see it. This was unfortunate, however it was closed for 6 months. (No websites or people warned us previously), but when we got there it was obvious we couldn't go.
We then was advised by a security guard from a building in China-town to go on a boat trip that you can access at many piers along the Chao Phraya River. The boat trip was fantastic, it took us around the area in a circuit (going along a canal to get back upstream the river). We saw a lot of Bangkok that you wouldn't usually see and there was a boat to ourselves.
We even stopped off whilst on the boat to a shop. The shop was basically a lady on a smaller boat with many items available for purchase whilst mid-float. I wanted to experience this so I purchased a can of Fanta, Jamie also purchased Fanta which was a first as I have never traded with another shop on a boat on a canal before and (I suppose I never thought i would).

That night we went to Patpong Night market which was busy, and very "heated up" as there were many people tugging us to go and see different shows and visit their market. We were getting followed and pestered to buy things and see things which is what we have seen previously in Phuket, however this was on a much larger scale. It was certainly starting to become annoying and I suppose being our age and being male doesn't help as the "Hard Sale" techniques were very intense.
Bangkok, in our opinion was definitely worth a visit. It was completely different to anything I have ever seen and by the end of it I was looking forward to moving onto Chiang Mai. It was great, but very "In your face". With many people trying to make as much money out of the tourists as possible.
Yesterday, we packed our bags and headed for Chiang Mai (where we are right now). We got a flight which was only 30 minutes delayed, from Bangkok to Chaing Mai. We arrived in Chiang Mai yesterday and our first impression was fantastic. The taxi from the airport to our hotel worked out at around 120 Baht, which is just over 2 pounds. Split between the three of us, this is a lot cheaper than taxi's from other places (especially Koh Samui and Koh phangan).
Our hotel in Chiang Mai is called Centera and is fantastic. One of the nicest we have stayed at, and for short of 15 pounds a night each, including breakfast and being really central. It is exactly what we want, and it has many facilities, bars a big fitness suite and a swimming pool. Which means that for the 6 nights we are here for, we can really relax and enjoy Chiang Mai to its full potential.
Last night, we went to the Night Bazaar. The night bazaar is packed with Thai culture and tourist markets, also the markets are extremely laid back with very few hard selling stalls enabling us to freely browse the stalls without being pestered which we have found a lot more relaxing.
Being pestered isn't a problem, as we are now used to it and as long as we calmly say no to things we don't want and just walk away, it makes it easier to "escape".
Today, we are relaxing and are going to plan what to do tomorrow. We aim to do an activity day, and there are many activities on offer. We do plan to do elephant trekking, quad biking up the mountains and going on the explorations of the local "Thai Culture" available to see in Chiang Mai.

So, that's us pretty much updated, Jamie will be posting some pictures that we have taken throughout the past week or so.

We'll try our best to write an update soon!

Long Time No Blogging, here's an update:

So we last posted on Monday where we had arrived at the Aquamarine resort in Ao nang Krabi.

On the Monday night on the off chance we booked an excursion to the 4 islands around Krabi and Phuket. We didn't quite know what to expect for our 6 quid but it turned out to be one of the best days out of the trip.
An early start with a scrumptious hand delivered breakfast to our room we were picked up from the lobby at 9. Still quite wondering what the day would bring the pick up truck became full with other eager tourists.
After a little wait at the shore we were guided onto a Long Tail boat, like a herd of sheep. The long tail boat was basically powered by a huge motor turning propeller which was angled into the water by a "jolly" fisherman. All of the components were on show with the moving mechanism easily accessible by hands, lets put it this way: it would never pass British standards of Health and Safety. But we were not too fussed so longs we got there safely.
A quick decision made us move onto the roof of the boat which made it possible for us to soak up more of the views and sunshine, with some fantastic scenery which was picture perfect.
With the white sand between our toes and clear blue sea only a leap away it couldn't get much better until we went snorkelling surrounding by a wide range of colorful fish and coral.
The sea water was very salty with Ben Joe referring it too McDonald's chips which they had previously sampled in Phuket, it wasn't the nicest tastes in your mouth but we got used to it and the surrounding beauty certainly made up for it.
The snorkeling session was closely following by a Running Bomb of the top of the boat which was particularly amusing as Joe soaked many of the passengers on the lower deck of the boat.
Jamie's attempt at a dive simply ended in a painful belly flop which was sore for some time. But recoverer was needed for the next island for Beach Football.
As we arrived at the final island we knew we had caught the sun especially Joe (after his many top ups of the cream), therefore we slapped the sun cream on again like it was icing on a cake.
As we pondered around the island soaking up the scenery once again, Jamie asked one of the locals for the ball with a quick and snappy Yes! next thing we knew it Joe was involved and a match was set up after a heated, fun, sandy game with retired back to the Long tail boat.
After the boat journey home, we were thankful for a relaxing dip in the pool, followed by a pleasant meal in the local Ao nang town. Our beds were our savour at the end of the night with a good quality dosage of rest on order.