Luang Prabang...

hey fellas,
am still in loas hanging out in this town called luang prabang. it is addictive! cake, movies in english, fantastic people and a wonderful bar. i think i may just stay here until it's time to come back for the wedding! andre and i are about as happy as pigs in mud! we've seen a lot of wats, markets and food shops here, but definitely the best thing we've done is head to the waterfalls. they are secluded, picturesque (ergo, i will publish some pictures soon) and fabulous to swim in. there was one moment though when we had all decided to climb out onto a tree limb to have someone take a photo of us all, when we hear our mate yee-man go "there's room for one more up here... EEEEK" Splash! and we all start wetting our selves over how funny it is that she's fallen into the water. until someone realises... yee-man can't swim! so we all jump out of the tree and jorge (our resident german) and a french guy leap to her rescue draggin her out of the waterfall pond. she is killing herself laughing the whole time and obiously being a dead weight until she all of a sudden comes over in a panic and realises that she (the chain smoker) now has no dry cigerattes and that none of us smoke. i've never seen someone panic so fast! but it was hilarious! poor yee-man.

as per travelling... andre and i were intending to spend a month in laos but we're having such a good time here i think the real figure will be something closer to five or six weeks. we keep hearing people talk about vang vieng which is where you go down the mekong river inside a tractor tyre tube and just drink, play on flying foxes and float through caevs. so we'll defintely end up there at some juncture. and even though i know it's going to be totally over rated i am still insisting that we visit the plain of jars so that i can take some photos. even though this means we will travelling 16 hours on a bus so i can spend ten minutes taking photos. gee, these girls put up with a lot of rubbish from me!! but i like to think i earn my keep in witty conversation nd by bringing in fun people for them to play with.

much as happened for australia day. we had a little party. i found some tim-tams so we had tim-tam straws and drank $2 champangne (which really is quite expensive for a 3 litre bottle!!). it was soooooo bad that it was almost good again! i hope you guys all had a lovely day and though i know some of you hit the bended elbow (tools... it's an english pub!) i'd love to hear what the rest of you guys did. and of course how the bush fires are going. is everything under control now? it all sounds like it's been fiarly eciting in austalia at the moment!

ok guys, i'm off to have some lunch with the crew. it's really awesome at the moment, most of the people we've met travelling seem to have turned up in luang prabang at the same time so there's about eight of us hanging around at any given time. it's rad.

write me hey?
love,
simone x

Laos...

Hey guys,

sorry i've been a bit awol lately but it is not a lack of passion for the blog, but rather a lack of semi-decent internet connection. andre and i have hooked up with these two awesome girls called yee-man and shinaed from england and ireland respectively. We met them on the bus out of Pai and have hung out with them since. We came into Laos via Chaing Khong in Thailand and to get into Laos we actually had to take a longtail boat across the mekong river. We spent the night on the Laos side of the border in this one water buffalo town and then hooked up with these three mental boys and agreed to go to the bus station with them. We were told that the bus left at 8am so we turn up and find that the bus doesn’t leave until 9.30... dammit. Oh well we spent ages drinking coffee (made with oodles of sweetened condensed milk!) and getting to know the guys and met another german guy called yorge (of course entirely too hard to say after a few lao beers, so he is forever more known as george). Anyway, this ranks right up there as one of the WORST bus trips ever! it was heaps dusty, bumpy to the point of hitting your head on the roof, there was bus sickness going on all over the shop and the lao's on the bus persisted in touching us the whole way up. major points though to the rather fragrant piss taker who slobbered all over shinaed's breast whilst "sleeping". honestly, i didn't find it that bad, however the other girls suffered a fair bit. this is their first time abroad so they are more sensitive to stuff like that. i just bury my head in a book the whole way and if it's too bumpy for that then the mp3 player will fill the gap sufficiently.

anyway, ten hours after we started that ill fated trip, it FINALLY ended... which doesn't sound like a bit deal, but it bloody was. We arrived in Luang Nam Tha and we've been crashing out here for the last few days. Well, there was one little thing. The girls, george and I started a three day trek today. i got to the top of the first hill and started vomiting, so thought it best to come back down rather than chance three days being ill in the middle of no man's land. As it turns out, I'm fine but it means that i'm crashing out on my own in a bit of a one horse town for the next few days. but this is also a good thing. yesterday we hired some push bikes and went for a ride out into the country and i really enjoyed it, so i think i might engage in a bit more of that tomorrow. i think it'll be nice to just chill. especially in view that after this we have some more dusty bus rides ahead of us. on the up side laos is just the most gorgeous place. the rice paddies and huts are ridiculously picturesque and i spend my days in awe at all the cute kids, puppies and piglets. did i mention it makes me just a LITTLE bit clucky? but only for about 0.2 of a nano second! the other thing i find really amusing is the way we all shout road instructions to each other while riding. I’ll be pedaling along and all of a sudden i’ll hear someone shout “chicken crossing” or “get out of the way stupid puppy” or just “right, right, no the other bloody right shinaed!!”... all fairly standard road signs really. And amongst all this poor george stands there stoically trying to catch the rush of babbled girl English around him and stoically waiting for us to stop faffing around and actually fufill which ever activity we’ve pledged ourselves to. He also sat through two hours of s drinking beers and watching fashion tv last night. poor bloke must be REALLY desperate for company!

today was a bit of a stretch on the old nerves though. after my guide and i had climbed back down the hill we had to wait for a ride back into town. I look so strange to these people that they just stood there staring at me until i fell asleep on my own crossed arms (when i woke up they had dissipated). the whole thing made me feel a little bit like a science experiment! anyway, so we finally get a tuk-tuk (like a taxi) back into Luang Nam Tha and then get stopped at road works for four hours. The whole time I’m just trying to not heave and these Lao’s won’t stop looking at me and talking about me. I finally cracked and asked the guide what the group of men were talking about and she said they were discussing whether i was too old for marriage at 23 but if that could be compensated by my pale skinned chubby beauty! in the end one man did ask me if i’d consider being his wife and i told him that i’m far too young to be married, and besides, my laos visa runs out in twelve days and what would i do then? he admitted that those were fair reasons, taught me to count to five in Lao and gave me a discount on my tuk-tuk fare. can’t ask more than that can I? I did at one point consider asking how many water buffalo i’d be worth but i thought he might think i was just trying to barter a final sale price like the ladies in the market!

anyway, have made it back to luang nam tha safe and sound in one piece. I will endevour to try and do a bit more emailing and blogging in the near future. maybe even put up some pictures. though with internet speeds (and costs here) that may yet be an idle dream!

stay safe guys, and if you can figure out how many water buffalos i’m worth then let me know!

love,
simone xxx

Pai...

Hey crew, a few days ago andre and I left sunny Chaing Mai, for sunny Pai. We did quite a bit of bludging around in Chaing Mai, shopping (I am now the proud owner of some very stylish black fisherman's pants) and just generally shooting the breeze with some people that we met trekking. But onwards and upwards. Pai is about 4 hours mini bus ride away from Chaing Mai. It is this totally hippy town set into the middle of northern thailand nothingness. it's ace. Andre and I set ourselves a personal challenge and have thus decided to learn how to ride a motor scooter. Honestly, not as god awful as it sounds! We've had no tumbles or stacks yet, of course this could have something to do with the fact that i adamantly refuse to go more than 40kms an hour. no matter what. So hardcore bikers we're not, however our new form of transportation has opened up a whole new world for us (other than one where dogs darting across the road are to be considered "the enemy"), we can now see a lot more of the countryside. So today we went and visited some hot springs and tomorrow we're going to visit some waterfalls. Too cool. We try to pack our days for a variety of reasons.
1) it's the point of us being away
2) it stops us from slow graze eating all the time. which given the choice, we would do.
3) it tuckers us out so we don't have to spend heaps of money on Chang beer to do the job.

Oh yeah, one other cool thing. Andre and I are currently the happy renters of our very own bamboo hut. it has no toilet, shower and only one light which is on a series with every other light in the place (ergo, if someone turns a light on in their hut, our light dims). There are shared toilets and showers. It's a bit like camping at Lorne... without the Guiney's, but with a bamboo hut!

So after this... and this may last a few days yet... we're going to head to Laos I think. We were going to see the long necked Karen tribe, but we've heard a few terrible things about tourist practices there and believe it or not, I try my best not to encourage human exploitation. So we're going to give it a miss. Hmm... Laos... wish I knew anything about it! Any facts would be gratefully accepted as at this juncture I know... well... nothing.

Please write and tell me about your lives. I really enjoy your emails and messages, and though i am notoriously rubbish at answering them, I promise they are joyously recieved.

Stay safe,
Simone x

Trekking from Chaing Mai...

andre and i have been a bit out of the loop for the last few days as we've been up in remote northern thailand doing some trekking to visit some of the traditional hill tribes. it was really hard going on the first day but things eased up after that, never the less i still took a few tumbles for my efforts. never mind, someone has to and let's face it, it's not like i'm the most co-ordinated person in the world. to break up our long stretches of trekking we also did some elephant riding and bamboo rafting, of course the rafting guides couldn't resist the chance to throw us off our mode of transportation, thank goodness the elephant guides didn't feel the same way! we rode an pregnant elephant called meemu and were trailed by a lovely little baby elephant. each night we crashed out in one big bamboo hut with the other four people who were trekking with us. these huts are really rustic with no electricity and only an outdoor squatter to boast of as facilities. but it was awesome. i am cut, scratched and bruised and proud of it. i earnt these injuries. but thankfully none of them are serious.

anyway, i guess if you want anymore details you'll ask.

simone

The Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew

Yesterday Andre and I took in the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew (A wat being a buhuddist temple). It was amazing!

The Wat:
The whole thing is made up of a series of buildings, most one the ones in the wat are compltely covered in mosaic tiles. It is visually stunning. The walls are massive and considering the whole thing was built in the 15th century, it's in suprisingly good nick! There are these fantastic statues of mythical creatures all over the place, each is elaboratly painted. I guess the wat is one of those places where i just don't have words to describe it. Well, actually, there is one word... shiny. Honestly, there is so much gold and mirror and glass in this place that the glare is almost painful, but it's so beautiful that you welcome it (except for one idiodic moment where i tried to take a photo of myself against the gold of the dome with the sun glaring into my eyes, off the gold, off my shiny camera, back into my eyes. i'm stupid!). The coolest thing about the wat were these funky monkey demon things. Of course, with them standing in a variety of bizarre poses Andre and I were obligated to copy them for the sake of prosperity. Ok, I admit it. Prosperity be damned, it was bloody funny!

The big deal about Wat Phra Kaew is that it houses the Emerald Bhudda. Which I think personally sounds like it belongs in an Indiana Jones movie... Indiana Jones and The Curse of the Emerald Bhudda... not that i can actually attest to any real curse on the icon! This particular statue has been fought over by Thailand, Laos and Myanmar for hundreds of years. The whole thing was covered in plaster and put into hiding and it wasn't until some clumsy Thai knocked it over and shattered the encasing plaster that they realised the whole thing was made of jade. (Emerald is a misnomer... it was believed to be made up of that until about a hundred years ago and rumour and name were both firmly embedded in Thai conciousness by then). Anyway, it's a big deal... thousands of poeple come to visit the Emerald Bhudda a day and you can be thrown out of the Wat for pointing your feet at it or taking a photo of it. To the thai's both are the equivalant of spittingon or graffitting it.

The Grand Palace:
Not so cool as the wat, it's a bunch of fancy shmancy buildings. We did see a Thai version of the changing of the gaurds which was cool. Except the gaurds were about tweleve years old and looked like they were not old enough to be sporting the fire arms they were. Other than that the whole thing was lovely and peaceful with a bunch of cool elephant statues, all of which are in rememberance of the white elephants the Thai kings used to keep, though i'm not sure to what purpose. I guess when you're the king of Thailand you don't need a reason for doing anything. You just do it.

Wish I was a king. Or a queen even. Although you feel a bit like it here. People keep commenting on my white skin and my smile. The weirdest thing that has happened so far is when a little old lady came up to me in the street, slapped my on the tummy mutters something in Thai, gave me a winning smile and walked away cackling in delight. Andre and I ust sort of stood there in bemusement!

Other than that it's all normal really!! Andre and I are going to head up to Chaing Mai in a few days. Do some trekking, elephant riding and maybe some bamboo rafting or a cooking school. Haven't decided which yet. But I will endevour to keep you informed. Thanks for all your emials and MSN chats and stuff. The time difference with Australia isn't so unreasonable here so I'm luckily catching quite a few of you online! I will in the next few days try to upload some photos for you, I had a go today but the computer went a bit spiv! Never mind, it'll wait.

Anyway, talk to you soon lovies,

Simone xxx

Bangkok

Hey guys,
So... I'm in Bangkok and have been here for two and a half days now. Let me run you through things on a day by day basis...

Day One: Arrived in Bangkok (New Years Eve) and caught the bus into town. Got chatting to this guy called Nick who it turns out is from Frankson. We made the obligatory jokes about each other's home town and occupation, got on like a house on fire actually. Andre (who is suffering tremendously from jet lag) dozed. Nick advised us on how to get to the hostel we'd picked and told us about Bangkok. Turns out that our place is a bit of a mint green prision, the upside being it's very secure and safe. It's also about a 2 minute walk from Khao San Road, which is like backpacker central. I honestly have never seen so many dreadlocks, fisherman pants and mac pacs in one place. There are stalls up and down the street selling anything you could possibly ever imagine needing for backpacking, including the bags themselves!

Anyway, so we drop all our stuff, get changed and head over to Chryso and Shivan (Andre's sister and her Boyfriend)'s hotel. The Novotel Lotus. In the good end of town it is about a SQUILLION times nicer than ours! For example, it has hot and cold water. Ours only has cold. Their toilets take paper. Ours don't. But other than that, exactly the same i'm sure! So after being awestruck by their environs we headed over to the Bed Supper Club. http://www.bedsupperclub.com/home.php

Which is AMAZING! It's been regularly listed as one of the best clubs in the world and i can see why. This place is a minimalist's dream barbie house. So we counted down the new year here and drank cocktails and Shivan suprised us all with a bottle of Moet. Good lord, what a way to start the new year, shame all of the next few months won't be like that! Andre and I then headed home and came across an elephant. Just hanging out in the street with it's owner going for a walk. Returned to our mint green prison and slept off the comsopolitan martini's.

Day Two: So Andre and I got up RELTIVELY early and headed down to Khao San Road o just have a look around and get the vibe for the place. At which point I decided to fufil one of my new years resolutions. Get my nose pierced. So for the small price of 500 baht, i am the proud owner of a shiny little nose stud. It's only taken me two days of trying to rember that it's meant to be there and is not a bit of snot that needs to be blown out. Seriously though, it's awesome. It absolutely caned straight up but now it's fine and it looks really good (obviously in my own very humble opinon!). Andre, Shivan and Chryso we're killing themselves laughing th whole time i was having it done. Bastards :P (But don;t worry, mum the whole thing was very clean, hygenic and didn't hurt any more than i deserve for letting a bald thai man shove a piece of metal through my face!)

Having been so brave during that whole adventure the crew and I decided it was enough to merit a nice calming Thai massage. Which in essence is paying someone money to bash me up! They twist, crack and manuvour your body in ways that you didn't know it hysically could go and it was the most relaxing thing i've ever done. I did start to feel a little dubious when she grabbed my arms twied them backwards and then crack my back with her feet, but the whole thing turned out ok in the end!

After a refreshing juice shake we all headed out to thins POSH resturant on the river. It was so beautiful and calming. The only distressing thing is Shivan and Chryso's ability to let Andre and I pay for anything. I know it's lovely and wonderful because otherwise we wouldn't be having all these amazin experiences but I like to contribute! Anyway, It's incredibly nice of them and all finished now so i an rest easier again.

After a lovely restful evening what do all sane people do in Bangkok. Of course! Go and see a sex show in Patpong. Let's just say the whole thing was sad, and that i will never look at a banana in quite the same way again. I defintely do NOT recommend it to people.

Then after my fifth fruit shake of the day and Andre and I crashed out home.

Day Three: Andre and I were wandering through the temple next to our guesthouse and came across a Thai school where the kids are taught by monks. Had a chat to the year two teacher and go to have a look around and talk to some kids. It was fantastic. The kids are so little and cute. They wear the most immaculate school uniforms!

We then took a two hour boat trip around the canals of Bangkok taking in the floating markets, an orchid market, some temples and all the houses of the river. It was fantastic. It opened up a whole new side of the city to me. It felt like just being in a rural area.

Anyway, after a lovely lunch in Khao San Road we bid Shivan and Chryso good bye. Which brings me to now... and god only knows what comes after this! I've been wrapped, ripped off, amazed and appauled. It's onyl day three, how will i cope with the sensory overlead for another four months! It's going to be awesome. I'll try to get some photos up in the next day or two and blog more regularly so you don't have to read enormous boring misives like this!! Hope you all had a wonderful new year and are safe and well.

Talk to you soon,

Simone xxx