Thailand

Wow, what can I say.. It's been a while since our last blog update. To be more precise, it's been around 1month.. he he.. In other words, no need to waste precious Internet time with excuses, so here we go.

We left Laos after three weeks of intense travelling and three days of jungle. To be honest, we were both pretty glad to get back to civilization, stores and set prices. YEAH. Travelling in third world countries is lots and lots of fun, but it does get really tiresome to always get ripped off and stuff.

Our first big city in Thailand was a place called Chang Mai. The city, which used to be the capital of the country back in the day, is far north and is mostly known for its "amazing" trekking. It is really beautiful as well though. The old part of town is enclosed by an artificial river which runs in a square around the city and the whole city is lined with small streets and lots of vendors. As mentioned, the major reason why people come to the city is to do some kind of outdoor activity, whether it be trekking, elephant riding, rafting or anything of that sort and as a result hundreds of so called unique trekking experience shops have popped up everywhere. Every single one promises untouched wilderness and the opportunity to see local hill tribes. All sounds pretty cool eh??? Well, it really isn't. We spoke to some people who said it was all kinda gay, as the local hill tribes will walk around in their jeans and as soon as they see you coming will run and change into their local costumes, for so to try and sell you authentic Quicksilver t-shirts while they proclaim you are the first white person to ever see their village. I guess that's kinda exaggerated, but you get the picture. Due our craving for some sun, beach and ocean, we chose to skip it all and booked a ticket to Bangkok instead.

The bus for Bangkok left at 8 PM and drove through the night until we arrived in the capitol at 6 in the morning. The plan was to stay in Bangkok that day for so to jump on another overnight bus to Phuket that evening. It was going to be hell. The first thing we did after arrival at 6 AM, was to head straight for McDonalds.. Big Mistake.. For some reason, the Big Mac does not taste good at the wee hours of the morning. It is not to be recommended unless you are A. Still drunk from the night before B. On a diet and want to make sure you won't crave McDonalds for the next 3 months C. Are involved in some secret S&M eating club D. World War 3 has started and the only thing that survived the nuclear attack was McDonald's and yourself.

Anyways, just as the day started with shitty McDonalds, the next 24 hours would prove to be even worse. We spent the day walking around Kao San Road (the backpacker street) lugging around our backpacks.. It was horrible. After some searching however, we found a cheap ticket to Phuket and was allowed to leave our bags at the office. Was it ever nice to shed 20 pounds.. mmm ... ok back to the story.. we jumped on our second overnight bus at 7.30 and headed for Phuket. As usual, the air conditioning made it feel like we were sitting in a fridge on wheels and the seats where highly uncomfortable, but we finally made it to Phuket early next morning. Seeing that we were dropped off in the middle of Phuket town (not by the water) we were forced to find a local bus that would take us to the beach. See where this is going.. it's never ending.. N'ways, we arrived the beach area around 10 in the morning and by 12, we had found a nice little place run by a Belgian guy. We could finally put our bags down and rest.. aaaahhhh. The rest of the day was spent relaxing, looking around and eating, i.e. nothing too exciting.. After two really long bus rides and a really boring day in Bangkok, both of us were ready to spent some quality time in the sun over the next few day... Guess what guys? remember when I said the next 24 hours would be hell, well, extend that to the next 3 days would be hell... We did not get any sun, and shit really hit the fan... not fun!!!

When we awoke next morning, we figured it was about time to do some traveller's cheque accounting and opened our bags to get receipts and cheques out.. That's when we found out.. Our bags had been during the bus trip. ALL OF OUR TRAVELLER'S CHEQUES WERE GONE...!!!!! That's right 10,000 USD of traveller's cheques and 100 USD in cash had been stolen.. .. WTF MATE...!!! What the hell... We went from being rich to dirt poor in a matter of one night.... shit.. That's how the saga begins. We had to go to the police, call American Express, fax our receipts and various other non-cool stuff. The scary part was that AMEX told us that they had to review the case... Oh No.. what do we do if they don't refund us the money.. damn...

Luckily, none of our credit cards had been stolen, so we were in the clear for that. And check this out.. the thieves must have had some pride, because they left the one dollar bills and the $50 traveller cheques.. The scary thing is that all of it was in a locked section of our backpack.. That means they opened the pack (don't know how they got the key) went through our stuff for so to replace it all so carefully that it took us 24 hours to notice.. What bastards.. Oh well, not much we could do about it at that stage, so we figured, what better way to pick up where we left than getting drunk.

Thus, Haakon heads to the nearest 7 Eleven, picks up 2 large beers and comes back to the hotel lobby ready to drink. Since the hotel guy (the Belgian owner) had been such a nice and helpful guy, we donated one of the beer and started chatting. Needless to say, this wouldn't be the first beer of the night. One quickly became two, and two turned into 4-5. By 11PM, we are all pretty wasted, and when the Belgian dude invites us to come with him to a party, we are all ears. His Japanese friend was having a B-day party down the street and we had been formally invited.. Kick ass. We stumble over to the bar to find 15-25 Japanese males and 3 Japanese girls. hmmm there's something a little bit off here, I remember thinking. Oh well, we get ourselves some beers and start chatting... that when we realize. they are all gay, and we are at a Japanese gay party... Ha ha. This rocks. Three minutes later, they all start dancing and shirts go flying. The party's picking up!!! Of course Haakon had to follow suit and bar now consisted of 15-20 shirtless Japanese dudes, One shirtless Belgian guy, one shirtless Norwegian and 4 girls.. It was awesome. We had a great time. We were drinking and dancing the whole night and eventually made it home some time in the morning. The day had turned from really, really shitty to a memorable experience.. kinda cool how stuff like that happens.

The rest of the night was, as far as Haakon was concerned and uneventful affair. However, Mahta may have a different version. Apparently during the course of the night, Haakon had woken up and crawled out of bed and over to one of the corners right beside the toilet and the garbage can. The object of this unnatural walk was to rid himself of some of the obscene amounts of alcohol he had consumed that evening.. But why Haakon?? Why do you have to do it 2 metres away from the toilet and 30 cm next to the garbage can in the far corner of the room?? The answer to that my friends is: I have no idea, and it'll probably not be the last time...

After a long night, we awake next morning eager to go to the beach to get a little bit of a tan. Guess what.. As discussed earlier, the Gods were not on our side this week. It was raining... The day was really boring and due to this, I refuse to write anything about it as it will only remind about how bored I was.. makes sense.. Oh, hold on.. we had some nice shisha in an Arabic place... kinda cool..

It was sometime in the evening that the next evil thing happened. Haakon had consumed some sort of bad food and had been food poisoned. The next 2 days would not be fun. I spent half my time sleeping, 40% watching TV and the rest on the shitter.. Not fun. I had fever and everything, and felt really sorry for myself.. I'm sure you guys are all looking for some more details, but I don't think this is the appropriate forum for that kinda talk... I'll tell you all about it on the next secret S&M Eating Club meeting.

When we finally left Phuket after 4 days, we did so having achieved zero of our objectives.. We were no more tanned, we hadn't seen the beach and we had not used our swimwear at all.. C'est la vie...

Our next destination was Krabi and Railey beach. The plan was to spend one night relaxing for so to rent a motorbike and go to the airport to meet Grant and Krystal. For those of you who don't know these characters, they are two good friends of our from Toronto. I used to work with Grant and Krystal is his lovely girlfriend.

After meeting up with G & K the next morning, we were all ready for some serious beach time. We had found a really cool place on Railey beach and spent the next few days rock climbing and laying on the beach. It was awesome. We spent the evening chatting with the local bartenders and eating really good food. I don't know how much there is to write, but it was all really cool. The rock climbing was awesome, and we found what must be the galaxy's prettiest beach. Well, maybe not that pretty, but it was pretty awesome anyways..

After 4 days of doing as little as possible, we left for Kho Phi Phi and some intense diving. The island is only 2 hours away by boat and is really easy to get too. Seeing that it was low season, the hotels were empty and after a little bit of searching, we ended up finding a really nice place. (We even had a pool!!!)

After our relaxing days in Krabi, the next 5 days would prove to be kinda stressful. Mahta and Haakon signed up for their Advanced Diving Course, while Grant and Krystal signed up for the Beginners Course. They both consist of early morning and many dives, so the next few days were mostly spent in the diving world. It was awesome though. Mahta and myself went wreck diving (was kinda cool, but the visibility wasn't perfect), night diving (which was really cool. We were followed by two big Barracudas the whole way) as well as three other regular dives. I think the coolest thing we saw were two 3 metre long Leopard Sharks sleeping on the bottom, one giant sea turtle and tons of Nemos. Diving really rocks..

While we were on the island, Grant also got a huge tatoo on his shoulder. It was really cool!!! Some local guy did it all freehand with a bamboo stick and ink.. Super cool. And I got a huge picture of a shark tattooed on my back. It's wicked. I got the guy to give it red eyes and all.. It looks awesome... Naaaahhh just kidding ma... Didn't get anything, but I bet I got your pulse racing by now...

The last night of the dive course we were forced to sample the local bar scene in order to celebrate our diving graduation which was really cool. We were joined by a few of the dive instructors and spent the night drinking buckets (vodka, ice and Redbull in a bucket). The place we went to even had a Muay Thai rink in the middle.. You could sign up and fight your friends.. After a few buckets Grant and I were ready, but by this time it was all over and we were gently asked to go back and drink more instead.. OK... It was a really cool night with lots of laughs and many drinks.. And the best part guys, Haakon managed to keep all the drinks down.

We left next morning for Thailand's southern most island called Ko Lanta. After randomly picking between 20 different hotels, we ended up at this really nice bungalow / chill out place.. It was really nice and relaxing. G & K spent 2 days with us before they had to head home, while M & H spent 5 days before leaving for Malaysia. We have quite a few pictures from Ko Lanta, so here they come.. Most are pretty self explanatory.

This is the bar/restaurant at the place we stayed. It was really nice with a wicked view.

Guess who??? Yours truly Mahta and Haakon

The first one is just a view from the bar, while the second one is taken from a 5 star hotel that was close by.

After some relaxing days in Ko Lanta and our Thai visa nearing expiration (how did we spend so long in Thailand?) we decided to head to Malaysia. After two days of traveling, we finally arrived at the "paradise" of the Perhentian islands, right off the east coast on Peninsular Malaysia. By now, it is drawing close to monsoon season and thus, many places are closing up for the season. We spent 4 relaxing days doing absolutely nothing but lay on the beach.. It was really nice Oh wait, we had one dive, which was great. Our dive master was attacked by a big trigger fish (which bit her on her forehead) but besides that it was a normal dive. Having said that, this "normal dive" was fantastic. There are fish everywhere of all sizes and colours (especially small Nemos) and tons of beautiful coral. We saw sting rays and bamboo sharks! Well worth the money.

Our plan was to leave the Perhentian Island for so to get an Indonesian Visa in Kuala Lumpur, so we jumped on an overnight bus to the capital after 4 days. We were actually really lucky, cuz we got the last 2 seats on the bus.. Everyone else had been smart enough to reserve beforehand!!! Note to self.. stop being so stupid.. he he..

We are now currently in Kuala Lumpur and the blog is finally up to date. Our plans have changed slightly due to some minor complications with Ramadan.. It's the Muslim's holy month right now, which involves fasting from sunrise to sunset. Because of this, most restaurants are closed and many shops close early.. i.e. Sub-optimal travel conditions. We thus decided to go to Philippines first, and will fly out of here to Manila tomorrow morning. We are both really looking forward the the Philippines and will tell you guys all about it.

Hope you are all doing good and that life is treating you well.

Lots of hugs from Southeast Asia.

Hey guys,

First I would like to apologise for the delay in updating this stuff. Internet in the places we went to in Thailand was bitchin' expensive, so we opted out of the updating. :-)
Sorry guys

Anyways, seeing that it's been a while, we better get started. In other words, find yourself a beer, kick your friend/colleague/brother/mum off the comfy chair and enjoy.

As I told you in the last blog entry, we left Bangkok that evening at around 6 o'clock to catch a night bus to Chumpon. We had a nice big airconditioned bus and everything was going great until the bus stops at 3 in the morning. "Probably just a bathroom break" we told eachother and went back to sleep. 30 seconds later some little Thai dude comes up to us and says "this is where you get off".. Ok, fun stuff. It appeared as if we were at some dinky little bus station in the middle of nowhere and we were shown a room with floor mats and a bunch of "thai style" pillows. Needless to say, the night ended up being rather uncomfortable, but by 6.30 we had finally boarded a van with 7 other people and ended up somehow by the pier. The next 2 hours were spent relaxing on a boat with 40 other backpackers on our way to Ko Tao. Amazing feeling!!!!

Once at Ko Tao we were greeted by 40 Thai people trying to sell us diving courses. The island is 7 km long and 3 km wide and acts as the home to more than 35 dive schools. Competition was in other words kinda rough. At this time, we didn't really know what to do. None of us knew much about diving and everyone we talked to offered us "the best diving experience on the island".. hmm Lucky for us however, Mahta had met Chris, an American guy, on the boat who had been to the island 3 years earlier and was going back to the same school to do more dives. Kickass!!! We finally had an independent dude we could trust. We jumped onto the back of the pickup truck with these guys and drove 3 minutes to the dive shop to talk to the owner. She ended up being a super cool chick and we got what would prove to be an absolutely killer deal. Also, as a complimentary service, all the dive schools gave free accomodation for 4 nights, so we were now off to pick our place. We ended up with a pretty shitty bungalow, but for the price we paid, we didn't really care. Kickass.

I'm not going to bore you with the details of our diving, but it was some of the coolest stuff we've ever done. Everyday worked out pretty much the same. For the morning part, we'd meet up at the dive shop (we being: Mike, our super cool dive instructor, Bill, Chris's American friend, and the two of us) and learn about diving for a few hours. The afternoons were spent on a boat diving, relaxing and talking shit. All in all, we had 4 dives and saw some super cool fish, including the real Nemo. We had an unreal time and I really wish I could go back and do it all again.

As mentioned above, we did our course with Bill and Chris, two American guys from Colorado, which we got to know real well over the course of the next week and a half. We spent our last night at Ko Tao celebrating the opening of the World Cup and our graduation into the PADI system. It was a great night except that we slept in and almost missed our 9:30 ferry the next morning! Should've invested in a better alarm clock, we're working on it...

So, we left Ko Tao and headed for Ko Phangan for a full moon party. The ferry ride was pretty rough considering the aching hangovers, but we managed. We arrived to an overwhelming amount of taxi drivers yelling "Haad Rin, Haad Rin!" (where the full moon party takes place) but we took Chris' advice and stayed at Haad Yuan, a beautiful and peaceful beach. Our bungalow here was definitely a major upgrade and it treated us well. Well, except the ginormous spider (10 cm wide) haakon found. Turns out what is ginormous to us is only normal to the locals who laughed hysterically at our reactions.

Time flew by at Haad Yuan.. the full moon party was alright, it was more like a commercial festival than the party we were hoping for. Quite the site though! We spent a few days tanning, and Haakon managed to turn himself into a tomato regardless of the 30 SPF sunscreen! It's okay though, he's recovered.

On June 14th, Mahta decided to have her birthday.. What a day.. We spent the afternoon doing a 2 hour long jungle hike and the evening drinking vodka buckets (complements of the owner of our hotel). Also, earlier that day, we had met a super cool Israeli couple who provided us with music all night. The guy was a progressive trance DJ and spun some really crazy stuff. We drank and talked trash pretty much the whole night. By this time, the 4'5 (150cm) tall, 45 kg heavy Thai owner was drunk as shit, but nevertheless had a great time. (P.S. Haakon managed to get his hands on a chain of 250 firecrackers which we fired off that evening... Fun stuff) Also, just to make the night that much better, one of the people working at the resort had baked a cake for us all to enjoy. WOW, how's that for service....

We spent 6 day on this fantasy beach of ours, but had to eventually leave for Malaysia. It was a sad departure as we had become really close to Chris and Bill. The Israeli couple and the resort people had also made a huge impact on our stay. Definately a place we would like to come back to..

We jumped on a bus early morning on Thursday to get to a place called Butterworth in Malaysia. The bus ride was really shitty (15 hours on a small mini bus...), but we managed to get the anyways. That is, we ended up at an island instead, called Penang, but close enough. This is where I will have to bring out the nasty words... Coming from beautiful Ko Phangan to this place was like going from heaven into the anus of the world. The place was dirty as shit, the rain went through the roof and into the "hotel" rooms and it stunk like ass.. What a place!!!

We spent the evening trying to find a decent place to eat dinner, before settling for some shitty pub food. NOT HAPPY!!!
The next morning, we checked out of our "high" class $10 a night hotel and ended up at a much shittier place for $5 a night... wooohooo... We're moving deeper into anus. It's like I've always said, if you're going to try something shitty, make sure it's done right..

The day we spent at Penang island turned out to be really good though. We rented a motorbike and with Haakon driving and Mahta hanging on for dear life, we managed to make our way around the island.

The next morning we left for Kuala Lumpur, which is where the fairtale trip goes on pause. We're spending a few days here in KL before we head down to see Henken in Singapore. We're super stoked about getting to bug him for a few days and will update the blog as soon as we get some more good stories.

P.S Iran's lost two games and Mahta is being laughed at by the locals...

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,