Goodbye Thailand...

Goodmorning Bangkok, goodbye Thailand. Pleased to meet you? Not so sure... We came with expectations of rice fields, big smiles, dirt roads, frail woman in head wraps proctecting them from the sun selling insects and a tranquail paradise of pristine white beaches. What we got? Its not that we have'nt loved it here it's certainly been an amazing and irraplaceable adventure of a land that is almost courrupt with tourisim. It has taken, sucked and drained most Thais. The desperate atempts to pull another tourist into a scam or overpriced taxi to buy a suit or a click clack frog is down right annoying extreemly sad and you somehow can be sympathitc to their cause. The very God and King that keeps them so free and happy are also the reasons they are so poor and desperate to do anything they can to keep there place in the world. The grandure of the upperclass is like Dubai where the poor are like the slums with no middle ground. God requires food delivered to the statues everyday and the King requires two anthems sung to him everyday at 8am and 6pm. (They stop and stand in place on the spot) Its a classic poor get poorer and rich get even richer. Not to mention the courrupt police force who let drink drivers off with a small bribe, nothing seems to get better and in my opinion on a downhill sprial to join other world tourism fails. We got all those things but we also got what we came for too in small doses ofcourse but the most beautiful food (eating, eating always eating), the biggest smiles of some Thais is enough to make you want to tip them just for being them, the most amazing workmenship in sculptures and crafts and tenatious attitude towards everything nothing will ever be broken in Thailand its always fixed with whatever can be found! When it came a smile from each of us came so automaticly staring at each other knowing that we have seen some of the real Thailand. Im glad we came it was a real adventure from south to north now to cambodia, 24 days, 2 planes, 8 boatrides, 6 minivans, 5 buses, 2 bicycles, 1 scooter, countless tuk tuks and probably 300kms of walking we are now 12 Hours (of 21) into another smelly packed Government issued bus next to the toilet for the last leg of our trip! Good bye Thailand, pleased to experience you, hello Cambodia.

P.S. Yesterday in Chaing Mai was really great we all went for a massage, Krystal got a foot scrub and it turned out to be a full leg and foot workout and she bruised her legs and pulled her Toes out of her sockets!!!! You would think she would love a massage! Kelsey and I got a full body massage (Thai style) it was rough but amazing! Even our eye brows, our jaws and our buts!
P.P.S. The lady in front is vomiting into a clear plastic bag for everyone to see.
P.P.P.S. Krystals sitting in a beautiful wet chair on a plastic bag with the chair smelling like off milk reading about lady boys (whom are very funny) Love you all and post soon. X

Ladyboys and cooking Chiang Mai

After our 10 hour bus ride we took a stroll around the city/town of Chiang mai. It was nice to be in a place where it is alot calmer! Every tuk tuk toots at you still,slows down and says tigers,elephants etc and here there are a million tuk tuks wanting to take you somewhere. We are over them! Our patience for them is running very low! We had our morning fried rice and walked some more and were stopped by the heat we had to get a beer! Some of the clothing shops are awesome, hand made stuff, we both bought some pants for russia. Beautiful coats, i want to buy buy buy,but no room and no money.For lunch tim found a dead cockroach on top of his can of fizzy and there were alot of bees in the fruit cabient, the hostel guy recommened this place to us. Prob wont be back. In the evening the hostel took us out to the market to get something to eat and a cabaret show done by ladyboys! The market food was ok, (we cooked better in our cooking class) but the ladyboy show was alot of fun! Some funny photos and videos! Some of them really do look like ladies! We had a really fun night. Today we had another amazing day, thai cooking class! We went to the market first and collected our ingredients, then our teacher named Pear drove us 20 minutes to a little country town. Very very quite! We stopped of at some place hoped on bicycles and biked 5 min through the village to our cooking class. We made amazing food! Made the best phat thai, the yummest curry(we even made our own paste), delicious fried rice and lots more. It was the best food we have had in thailand! We biked around the village for half a hour, was very peaceful and you felt like you were in thailand! The course was the whole day and only was 1000 baht $33. We even got a recipe book! We will cook you all a thai feast! Now Cambodia tomorrow, and Tims turn to write the blog... miss you all. X

The wall that divides new town and old town

Chiang Mai

Hi guys, just letting you all know that we are now in Chiang Mai for 2 nights. We took a over night bus 10 hours. Arrived here this morning at 6am. Took us a while to get a taxi as the taxis here are a bit of a scam,charging you a lot! Yesterday we just spent all day at a Bangkok rooftop pool, too hot to walk around. Bangkok really wears you down! We are planning to do a thai cooking class tomorrow!

Busy day in Bangkok!

Yesterday morning we checked out of our hostel to walk a few blocks to our new hostel ( its a bit like a guest house $8 a night) to meet kelsey. I tried to carry my bag on back so i didnt have to run through the traffic wheeling it in the rain. I made it one block after that i threw in the towel,it was to heavy, tim said the thais think im some sorta crazy white women. They were looking at me, but i didnt care i needed to get this bag off me. We made it to our new hostel and kelsey was already there, she only just made her flight as cathay pacific cancelled there flight so they were put on to her flight luckily 2 seats were left. Late morning we went for a walk to figure out what we were going to do,we tried to get scammed twice but we were too on to it! Im glad we did our research because they did sound genuine. We got offered a tuk tuk ride to chang mai 100km away! Crazy thais! Only in asia.We ended up going to the grand palace! It was spectacular! Too many tourists though,the place was covered in them. After seeing this temple i dont think we need to see any more. Then we walked along the tuk tuks to get cheapest price, alot of them rip you off. 50baht it was a deal, all 3 of us hoped in the back of this tiny wee tuk tuk holding on tightly! It wasnt as bad as i thought it would be, maybe he is a ok driver not a really bad one. We had a beer at khoasan road, it was nice just to chill by the fan after our very hot intense day. Later that evening we meet up with some people we meet from the last hostel and took kelsey out for her 1st street food! Pad thai then banana nutella crepe/pancake my favourite. The crazy frog lady was around again, like 7 different ladies trying to sell bracelets,hats etc. A english guy came running up to us saying he brought too many bugs, he had a bag full so tim helped him eat them! Tim is fine today :)  We then took the red bus number 15. The red buses are free because they are so old. One of our friends was in 7/11 and the number 15 came along,it was frantic, 6 white people running trying to jump on the bus we just made it. The doors close viciously! Enough to chop you in half! We headed for the tallest rooftop bar in the world! Our stop came up and the bus was packed we all were getting nervous hopping we would all get off together. It was such a happy moment when we managed to do it! The bar was beautiful! The city looked amazing,we felt like we were in bangkok! We all really enjoyed yesterday!

We dont under stand! 

Its a lot to handle!

Bangkok.... the heat and smells are just overwhelming. Its a lot to handle!  We hung out on khao san road which is very famous for food. Bugs, chicken feet, food you cant recognise.A rat like a cat running around.homeless people with missing limbs. People trying to sell Tim a suit, a lady with braclets forcing us to buy a braclet from her, we think she put a spell on us! She wouldnt leave us alone. She had this annoying wooden musical frog thing that she kept playing. Everyone was watching volleyball on tv japan vs thailand they all were going crazy,we walked past the police station they were all sitting down watching, there could of been a crime outside their window and would no of cared. Today we went to siam square (shopping malls and CBD) as we want to wait to see the temples and sights with kelsey. Also the  heat is hard to get use too. Our taxi was fine cost us not even $3 to go quite away. Sunday is car free day for bangkok but didnt look like it. We had our 1st roast in a while, rice with gravy duck and pork. We miss potato!

Bugs bugs bugs

Fake ID

No car day sunday

I couldnt help but give him some money, we got sucked in.

Toilets

What our new roast dinner looks like

Long trip to Bangkok 21/09/2556

We are now on the mainland, we are in Bangkok. We really enjoyed Ko Pha Ngan. We have meet a couple from russia that want to catch up and show us around when we are in moscow. We found out from them the year in thailand is 2556 not 2013. We didnt believe them,when we went for dinner we got our favourite thai cook to write what year it was. Cant get our head around it. Full moon party was very intense, the whole beach was packed. We didnt get any photos,it was to risky taking my camera.Before we went to the beach we had drinks at our hostel everyone was painting each other in neon paint. We only lasted a hour because tim drunk too much and needed his bed. Prob a combination of thai spirits.No full moon as it was raining. Im glad we did go home early the amount of injuries the day after was crazy. 4pm the next day we were heading to bangkok taxi for a hour, then went on a car boat for 3 hours in the dark then the bus and arrived here in bangkok at 6.30am.another taxi ride to our hostel, he dropped us of not outside our hostel,had no clue where we were, we eventually figured it out. Verg long day/night was hard to sleep on bus. We are pretty tierd today. Went out and tried our 1st meal in bangkok, raw chicken fried rice. We were so tierd and hungry mc donalds it was,reliable. We have walked around a little, we are just going to chill today. The heat is very intense here, and you have to be fully awake to cross the roads here. We are looking forward to getting out and about tomorrow. Kelsey arrives tomorrow night! Love you guys xx

Ko pha ngan

Ko pha ngan lunch dinner local

Tims artwork. Look at my feet they are so tanned!

Krystals artwork

Heading to Bangkok

Start of bangkok

Hanging down the round from us in bangkok