Leaving Toronto

Hey all,

Believe it or not, but Haakon and Mahta have now officially managed to start their own blog. The address is pretty simple. http:\\kickingit.travellerspoint.com. Don't know how often we'll update, but we're hoping to manage at least once a week. Feel free to check back at ay time if you're A.) Bored B.) Wondering what the hell Mahta and Haakon are up to C.) Wanna spend some quality office time daydreaming D.) Wanna give us some good travel advice E.) Want a reason to "kick it" in Asia with us or F.) You're wondering if Haakon's been thrown in jail or not and if so, how much you should contribute to "Haakon's Jail fund".

In other words, I feel that there are quite a few good reasons to lean back and enjoy some travel stories once in a while. We'll try to the best of our abilities to keep it funny and light :-)

Anyways, enough with the promotion of the blog, let's get down to business.

As most of you know, I quit my job in Toronto about 3 months ago, and have since been super busy planning this trip and packing my stuff.

Eventhough it has been a hassle to leave Canada, I feel that overall it worked out fairly well. Mahta and I spent a few days in Boston, with the beautiful and ever hospital Karen, as well as a few great days in Houston visting mum and dad. Both trips were very successful and we enjoyed every minute of them.

After the trip to Houston, packing and selling stuff was the primary task at hand. As mentioned above, the whole process was fairly painless and on May 31, 2006, Mahta and Haakon had gone from having a Ford Mustang and a fully furnished one bedroom apartment to two backpacks weighing 5 and 7 kg respectively. How's that for packing!!!

We jumped on the plane to London at 6.00 PM on Wednesday but was delayed due to thundershowers for two hours. The plane ride was fairly uneventful, besides Haakon spilling a glass of wine on our new found friend in the seat beside us. DAMN!!! Gotta get that under control one of these days.

We landed in London early morning on Thursday, where we spent a day sleeping/sightseeing with Martin. (No, we did not sleep with Martin for those curious minds). Eventhough it was a brief visit, we had a great time and we got to say hi to Big Ben, the Queen, Martin, and various other important people.

After a day in London, we caught the 10.00 PM flight to Bangkok. This time I managed to keep my limbs under control, except the "tripping over headphones, kicking the sleeping girl" incident. I hate flying!!!

We landed in Bangkok at 3.00 PM the next day and headed straight for Khao San Road. For those of you who haven't been to Bangkok, it's the Mecca for backpackers. Basically, it's a 200m long street lined with bars, hostels, junk food and street vendors trying to sell you all kinds of crap. Kind of a neat place.

Not much has happened during our time here in Bangkok. For the most part, we have been out and about buying the rest of our necessities. We have however had time to see both the 5.5 ton golden Buddha and the 15,000 stall weekend market. Both were kinda cool. We also bought 8.5 metres of Thai silk and a handheld sewing machine, which we intend to create the world's two first and greatest Thai Silk sleep sacs out of. Think we can do it??

Seeing that we have 12 minutes left, this first chapter will now come to a close, but please keep checking for updates in the near future.

We will leave Bangkok tonight and arrive by bus in Chumphon tomorrow morning at 4 where we'll catch a boat to Ko Tao, off the east coast. Hopefully, if everything goes as planned, we'll have our diving licences in a few days. Wish us good luck.

Cheers,