Ayutthaya - Thailand’s old capital. We had been told we shouldn’t miss a night at this town, and it was pretty cool. A lot of what made it cool however, was the guesthouse we stayed at, a place called the Baan Lotus. The owner of this guesthouse is a lovely Thai woman who also speaks excellent english. She had organised a tour that ran nightly, taking us around the old temples and ruins, and also to an Elephant camp.

The Elephant camp was something else.. mainly because they had baby elephants there that they had bred, which were about 8-10 weeks old, and already waist high on me - probably weighing in at over 70kg. They were pretty unsteady on their feet, and struggled to get back up if they fell over, just like any other infants. Definitely one of the cuter things I’ve seen.

The temple ruins were pretty amazing, and they timed the tour so we got to see a lot of them at night. They have set up huge lights around many of the ruins, so seeing them all lit up is very cool. I’m not a huge “looking at ruins” type person, so the pace of the tour suited me well.

After the tour we got dropped off at the night market, where we had some food and headed back to the guesthouse for some much needed sleep. Marie hadn’t been feeling all that good (and neither had I to be honest).

Slightly backdated post.. and hopefully I will have some pictures up soon for this too.

We went on the classic Kanchanaburi tour today - taking in the Erawan waterfall, which was amazing, also the death railway, and the bridge over the river Kwai.

The waterfall was probably the highlight of the trip - seven levels, all linked by a rough walking track. I was impressed that at the first level security staff would check your bags, and mark any plastic bottles you had, and charge you a deposit for them - this to ensure that all rubbish type stuff is taken back out of the national park. Apparently no snakes in this area (phew!), however the mozzies apparently carried malaria, so care had to be taken. We went swimming on a few of the levels, amazing! The water was full of fish - cichlids even, which would come up and have a nibble of you if you stopped moving! Nothing painful, but it tickled Sadly we got to the top level, and found a whole busload of people, which wasn’t the coolest, however it was still very beautiful.

We then moved on to the death railway, which was just amazing, we rode in the train over the original viaducts they built around the edge of the river, you could hear the wood creaking as the train went over it. There was also an amazing golden buddah in a cave near this railway, which Marie wouldn’t let me flail in front of

After that we got taken to the bridge itself, we hoped that the tour would include a train trip over the bridge, but in classic tour tradition, it didn’t. We did however get to walk out over the bridge, and take some pictures, which was cool.

We also met some cool people on the tour, and then checked into the Jolly Frog backpackers, which was an amazing place. After a quick trip to the pharmacy to get some things to “Help sleep please” we ended up with some hardcore antihisthamines, which also listed “mild tranquiliser” on the packet.. they weren’t wrong I woke up hallucinating in the morning, which was kinda fun, and a great nights sleep was had by all. The $8 room was fabulous, with just a fan, but a private bathroom.

Amusingly when we asked the tour people about trains the next day, they told us there were no trains out of Kanchanaburi at all the next day, and if you wanted to get out of town you would need a private transfer to another town, to get a train there. Turns out they were lying, and just wanted to sell us a private transfer So we took the train happily the next day, and got back to Bangkok

Well this has gotta be one of the weirdest places I have had wireless access from……. We are staying in a guesthouse in Kanchanaburi, and our room is a room on a raft, floating on the River Kwai. Strangely enough, we have a solid wireless connection and more TV channels than we would know what to do with.

We had a lovely last few days on Koh Chang, some more Aussies arrived and we got them absolutely smashed and took them to a seafood restaurant, the one that picks you up in a boat, fun all round that night. I also got a fantastic massage and managed to get sunburned on the walk home, so now have a passable tan. The bus back to Bangkok was almost empty and pretty boring but our hotel was excellent - thanks wotif.com for the cheap bling. We went shopping too, bought Simon some bling glasses and lenses for about 1/4 of $NZ cost. He looks very intellectual Gutted to find out we missed out on Paul Oakenfold playing in central Bangkok bar by one day - that would have been an experience and a half to see that side of Bangkok nightlife.

So today we took the train to Kanchanaburi, 3 hours towards the Burmese border on a 3rd class, hard seat, open window train, and are now staying on this river raft. The train was fantastic, the open air breezy feeling was way better than any airconditioning could ever be, but man was my face and neck grubby when we arrived.  We are going on a touristy tour thing tomorrow, up to some waterfalls and over the historical bridge and stuff, should be fun.

Really looking forward to being back in Bangkok as well, we have heaps of stuff to see and I am definitely warming to the big ugly city thing. Very excited about the Chatuchak (J.J’s) market this weekend and staying in Khao San Rd and Chinatown.  I am so happy we decided to explore instead of staying on the island, as nice as the beach is. Will keep you updated on our adventures…….

We had a seafood bbq last night - it was absolutely amazing.. amazing because we got 1kg of the tastiest prawns, and two good sized snapper (or they called them snapper, they looked like something else) for about $20, and also amazing because Marie managed to make about the best bbq/steamed fish I have ever tasted. Ian also had a very novel way to start the bbq - put some charcoal on the barbeque grill, and place over gas stove - voila!

This was then transferred to the bbq outside, and all was good for some cooking action - resulting in this:

We found the roving market yesterday too, where Marie got all the herbs etc for the bbq, they also had seafood for sale, which looked amazingly tasty and fresh - definitely caught that morning, and such good value.

We’re nearly at the end of our stay on Koh Chang, currently plotting a few nights in Bangkok, then some adventuring - we just need to work out how to seriously downsize our luggage, plans are afoot though. The internet will probably get a bit more random as well, but I’m sure we’ll find ways to get online.

Weather has been reasonably predictable - rain in the evenings/mornings, and nice during the daytime itself. We have had some fun people come through the guesthouse, firstly we had a couple from Darbyshire, who were very fun - we shall have to catch up with them when we get to the UK. Apparently there’s a bar called “The Spanker” which they like… much amusement

The other notable guest is a lovely lady called Pippa who is from somewhere in north London. She’s nice and laid back, and we’ve shared dinner for the last two nights. Plans for tomorrow are to possibly get the BBQ out, and make a pile of seafood madness.

There’s a French couple who have arrived today, they’re very french and a little middle aged Their english isn’t too bad, however they’re a little distant, plan is to invite them to this BBQ tomorrow, which might break the ice some (beer always works!).

Marie took a lovely photo of the place we’re staying last night when we were in the canoe, so I’ve attached it. I get more and more impressed by our little camera.

I’ve also been coding a fair bit whilst here - working on a smugmug API library for AppleScript.. it’s getting there nicely now. It’s awesome to have time and motivation again to do my own coding projects, as opposed to work. I need to remember this and keep some time free when I start another job. It also feels good to keep a hand in as it were, and not forget the whole IT/coding side of things.

What else… we got confirmation today that the refund has gone though for our stay at the Banpu - so we now have 10 nights with absolutely nothing planned. We have a list of possibles, so the plan (sic) is to pick some random things off there, and basically take it as it comes. Hopefully we can leave our other huge suitcase at the Hotel we’re staying in before we leave, and possibly obtain/use a large backpack type thing for this period to save hassles. I’m very much looking forward to just randomly doing stuff and seeing more of this incredible country.

We also now have UK cellphone numbers thanks to my wonderful sister Marie is +447873723286 and I am +447873723321. These won’t work untill we hit the UK obviously, however it’s great to have the numbers to put on the CV’s now for looking for jobs.

Speaking of jobs.. the hunt starts next week, we’re now only three weeks out from the UK, so it’s a reasonable time to start spamming recruiters and the like to see what’s going on. I need to have a good look at a map of London, and work out where things are in terms of work/accomodation. Roumor has it we can stay with Leighton when we’re there, which gives us an awesome base. I’m very much looking forward to catching up with him, and Hayden, and I hear Michael Reynolds is also over there now which is fabulous. It’s going to be really cool to catch up with these guys again

Right.. that’s pretty much enough for now.. except that I’m also going to have a rss rant. For those of you still visiting the site for updates, you need to discover the fun of a rss reader. There are a few options, here are one or two

1. If you run Mozilla Thunderbird, you can tell it to keep an eye on our rss feed (linked on the left sidebar)
2. If you don’t, you can go to google.com/reader and it works very nicely, this is cool if you watch more than one blog, as it collects all the posts into one place and looks like gmail Just put in the address of our blog to subscribe, and google will work out the rss bit automagically
3. Google for “rss reader” and see if you can find a piece of software that you like.. this is quite a cool option if you check many blogs, and like the idea of a seperate application.
4. If you run a mac, netnewswire lite is free, and I quite like it It keeps me in touch with a couple of blogs, and whatever new software comes out for the blackbook etc.

Right.. rss rant over Back to our regular scheduled cutting

So, we hired a scooter, and Simon bought aviators to go with it. Observe the beauty below

However, I am not familiar with these contraptions, so yesterday, Simon took me out for a lesson. All was going well, until the suggestion was made to practice turns by weaving it between clumps of grass. I successfully slalomed for about 50m before the back wheel hit a soft patch and slid out, throwing me unceremoniously into the sand and coconut husks. Luckily nothing is broken, just my pride, and I have some very impressive purple and green marks all down one leg. Apparently there is another lesson today - he is a keen man, my fiance.

But the excitement was not over for the day! We set off to go find dinner at a local eatery, about 5 km away and as luck would have it, we get a puncture, in the middle of nowhere, in the dark with no street lights and a snake, possibly not dead, 10m from us. We gave the snake wide berth and set off back towards the last set of shops that we had passed. Amazingly after only walking for about 5 mins, we come across a brightly lit bar, with a full workshop attached to it. Minutes and 150B ($6NZD) later, we are all fixed with a new tube, and on our way again.

I love this country.

Well the wind changed today - it’s now coming from the south, and people are scurrying around to put up rain protection for their bungalows and the like (generally these things aren’t weathertight).

We’re definitely planning to stick it out here for another 7ish days - untill our time at the guesthouse is up, but we’re currently rethinking the stay at White Sands Beach, we might head back to Bangkok early, and explore more there or something.. It’s certainly great to have that flexibility right now.

It hasn’t gotten cold however - it’s still a nice 27 or so degrees celcius here, and very little wind.

This is a bit of a catch-up post, as I’ve been a little lazy of late. The other night we went to Pu-Talay seafood restaurant (Pu means “swimming”, and Talay means “seafood”, funny that). To get to this restaurant you normally drive, or call them and they send a boat. We decided that taking a canoe was a far better plan. We pulled up at the restaurant, much to the amusement of the staff, and found a seat right out over the river. The food was awesome - Marie had deep-fried sea bass (unmutated, but looking angry - eyes on and all) and I had a good sized plate of prawns in garlic and pepper - yum!

The highlight of the evening however was the thai couple sitting behind us, Goong and Ya (I hope that’s spelt right). They were out for dinner together, as couples do, and had bought their own bottle of Johnny Walker black label with them, and were making good headway through it. We ended up being the only people left at the restaurant - and got talking, which led to Goong offering us a drink. Given I have such a rubber arm, it was difficult to say no, especially given the mixers that he had on the table - I was keen to try this strange mix of liquids. Turns out that Whisky, Soda water, and a dash of lemonade in a tall glass is very very drinkable, and I’ll be keen to try it again sometime.

As these things happen, the conversation continued, with Marie and I learning some more thai words, and drinking more and more of this lovely concoction - right up until the bottle was empty. Goong and Ya took off on Goong’s scooter, and we leapt fearlessly into our canoe for the trip back across the river. After some interesting drunken paddling, we managed to get back to our wharf, and get out without getting too wet Definitely a very fun night, and cool to spend some time with Thai people.

Coming soon… the $4 lunch - including beer and maybe a few photos if the internet here doesn’t keep dying when I try to upload them.

Well I thought I had better post - this is meant to be a shared blog afterall.

We have had a lovely quiet day, the Aussies and the Hong Kong couple went off to do a snorkel trip somewhere and we have had the place to ourselves. Got an awesome breakfast this morning, the guy we are staying with knows the German owner of a bakery nearby, so we got fantastic croissants and rye bread for breakfast along with excellent coffee - both of which are usually shite here.

Braved the canoes for the first time today as well to go get lunch - Simon is quite the paddle pilot
Klong Prao has not changed all that much - I really need to find a good secondhand bookstore - I am ripping through the ones I have here way too fast.

Well, another beer is calling - and later on we are going to see if we can acquire ourselves a large seafood platter - will take pictures if we do.

It’s a hard life really, a few beers from the beer fridge, a good view, and it really doesn’t get too much worse from there. We’re now installed at the guest house, and it’s fabulous. I’m sitting with an Australian couple, they’re pretty random, and quite fun. Their idea of a "cheap night" out in thailand is somewhere near NZ$40 for the whole meal… We took them to a random backbackers restaraunt, and we ate an entire meal (four mains, rice and beers) for under NZ$16. They were so entertained by this that they paid for it The bus trip here was stunningly cool.. It seems I’m ranting about prices.. but it’s hard not to. $10 each got us 360ish kms from Bangkok to Trat, on a very smooth and straight road, and in a really nice bus where even I had enough legroom to enjoy it. It was also entertaining as the bus made great time, and was overtaking most cars - very unlike NZ heh Watching suburbian and countryside Thailand go by was an eye opener, which was what we wanted by taking the bus. Seeing the difference between affluence, and poverty was very interesting. Right.. more beer and talking shit - it’s hard not to here, it’s great

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