“One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster”

Ok, I know I’ve been home for a week now (ahhh!) and I’ve seen a lot of you.  I’m going to update my blog travels so I can tell everyone what I did, instead of telling some people somethings and some people other things. I had really expensive internet connections during out travels in Australia I wasn’t able to keep up with my posts.  Plus since I heard a lot of people were ACTUALLY following this I thought I’d bring you full circle.

I left off arriving in Bangkok after a crazy bus ride from Cambodia, a huge crazy market and meeting up with Tarcy.  The rest of our short time in Bangkok was spent getting duped by tuk tuk drivers and ‘gate attendants’.  There is a scam in Bangkok that tells you that the exhibit you are wanting to see is closed for a few hours – and they tell you to come back at a certain time.  They shove you into a tuk tuk to take you to a discount suit maker or other things and then bring you back for a low low price! It took me a few minutes to realize that we were being scammed and we jumped out of the tuk tuk within the next block.  This is basically how things worked in Thailand….everyone was there to rip you off.  I really didnt like dealing with tuk tuk drivers and decided to pay a taxi driver instead of getting ripped off left, right and centre.  I wasn’t impressed to say the least, and it really put a damper on my experience in Bangkok.  Ok – enough ranting – we ended up seeing the emerald palace and the reclining buddah, we took a tour of Kao Sahn Rd (big back packer area) and saw a movie in the fanciest movie theatre I’ve ever been in.

On February 24th we boarded a flight to Chiang-Mai – the second largest city in Thailand.  It certainly didnt look like a large city, and was a lot calmer and easier to get around.  Our main reason for going to Chiang-mai was to visit the Elephant Nature Park.  This park was established in the 1990′s and the founder (a local Thai woman) has made a sanctuary to rehabilitate  elephants and take them out of abusive owner’s hands.  There are now over 30 elephants in the park, each with their own sad story, and each day volunteers come in and see how the organization works and help out for the day.  We learned about an elephant that came from northern Thailand near the border of Myanmar that had it’s back foot severely injured by landmines.  Another elephant that was used in a breeding program and had her hips and back broken by constantly being mounted by male elephants.  Amongst the sad stories there were some happy ones. There were animals that were taken from their owners who were using them to beg in the streets of bangkok, who have now had babies in the park.  We were given the chance to feed the elephants, pet the babies and wash some of the elephants in the river.  It was an absolutely amazing experience and Veronica and I were so happy to have been able to do it!

From Chiang-mai we took a flight to Phuket, Thailand  – the big resort area of Thailand.  We stayed further down the beach from the main city Patong to avoid the lady boys and prostitutes but were still bombarded with them everywhere we went.  Phuket was nice – we had a very nice hostel near the beach and were able to do a day trip to Ko phi phi and their surrounding islands….think about the movie “The Beach”.  Tarcy met up with us in Phuket and we took the day trip together.  We took a boat to the lagoon where they first find the secret island….it looked so beautiful in the movie it’s been one of the things I was looking forward to.  So this peaceful secret beach…..is full of 15-20 boats with hundreds of people littering the shore and water. I know I should have expected this, but it was still disappointing! We then went snorkeling off the boat and saw lots of tropical fish, took tours of more lagoons and made our way to Ko Phi Phi island for lunch at the resorts.  The island was not impressive and was so full of resorts and boats the water was dirty and it was like any major beach town you could go to anywhere.  Our next stop was an island that was set up for the tour operators to dock and let the patrons snorkel, lounge on the beach or eat at the restaurant.  This was much nicer than the rest of our day, and we spent the last few hours in the water and relaxing on big rocks.  We spent the rest of our time in Phuket on the beach and one day rented scooters to go into town to go shopping.  It was a nice relaxing end to the first part of my trip.

On March 4th Vee and I said our good-byes and took off in different directions.  Veronica went on to Singapore and I made the long flight to Sydney, Australia to meet up with my next travel partner! Which is where I will pick up in the next post!

Thanks for reading!

Buddah