The Floating Market

We just returned to Bangkok from a town about 2 hours from here that has a floating market. It was a great experience and I'm glad we went. It's been my favourite experience in Thailand so far.

Even though the floating market is now mainly for tourists and not for Thai people, it's still a worthwhile experience. However, we were warned that it's better to go to the town and stay the night to get up early in the morning before the hordes of tourists come in on the tour buses. I'm very glad we listened. The first hour of our boat ride through the canals was very peaceful. Only a couple of other boats on the water. It's mainly people selling souveniers, but there were a few boats of ladies selling fruit and vegetables. Mark even got some soup noodles from a man making them on his boat. Once it hits 9am, the buses pull in and it's no longer quiet. That was actually exciting though to see all the boats on the water and people trying to sell their goods. It's just too bad that we weren't witnessing locals doing this and not other "faroungs or foreigners" like us.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but the area where we were staying seemed to have a large population of people that are deaf. Most of the street vendors in the area are deaf. We discovered this the first day and I was immediately curious if they would understand the sign language that I know. I still haven't quite figured out if Thai sign language is similar or the same as American sign language. I tried having a conversation today with the woman who sells stickers. I'm not sure if she didn't understand the sign language or if she did, but just didn't understanding what I was asking. In any rate, thank you is still the same.

Ok, so I'm not as good at eating spicy food as I originally thought. I kept telling Mark that I wouldn't have any problems here. Well, I have to take that back. The food is incredibly spicy. And even though I've had a cold and been unable to smell or taste for the past 4 or 5 days, my mouth still burns when something is spicy. I'm craving plain old bland food! We've been eating a lot in the food courts of these enormous malls that are all over the place. Most of the time the foodcourts are the same or just a bit more expensive than eating at a food stall, but they are much cleaner. And they are definitely cheaper than eating at a restaurant. We spend about 3 to 5 dollars per meal. What's also interesting is the method of payment at these food courts. Before you go in, you buy coupons in any amount that you want, say 200 baht. When you order, you pay with the coupons, no cash is exchanged at the places that are making the food. Not only does this save time in making change, but it also means that the workers are not handling dirty money and food. Makes a lot of sense to me. If you have extra coupons you simply go to the refund counter and they give you the cash back.

Well, that's about it for now. We are heading to Singapore tomorrow and then onto Malaysia for a month.

Pictures!

We've finally managed to upload some of our pictures. I have emailed some people (probably all of you who actually read this have received an email from me already) and invited you to look at the pictures. However, I just figured out how to make the albums public. Now, when we have new pictures I will just put a link on my blog so that you can view them.

I have tried to label some of the pictures so you know what you are looking at. I normally label the first one in a group so assume the ones that follow are from the same location. We still need to get the New Zealand and Sydney pictures up. Some of you may know that we lost half of our New Zealand pictures. We had 2 memory chips for the digital camera and I foolishly let Mark hold them. He lost the bigger of the 2 chips with all the pictures still on it. We have the first have of our New Zealand trip which is where we did the more exciting, adventure stuff, but we still lost out on everything we did after that :(

I will also be updating each blog to include links to the pictures that go with that blog.

Here's the link for our entire album:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/my_photos

Happy reading and viewing!

Bangkok

Bangkok is a very large city! Each different section seems like a different world from the next. We've managed to stay out of the backpacker central that is Khao San road and I'm quite happy we did. (We had enough of backpackers in Australia and Bali. Actually, not all - just the noisy and inconsiderate ones.) Khao San is insane with hundreds of guest houses and restaurants jammed into a street that is much smaller than I thought it would be. We visited the other day, but decided we were quite happy on the other side of town.

It's embarrassing to admit, but I haven't been having the greatest time in Bangkok. I couldn't wait to get to Thailand, but so far it's been rough. It's very large, dirty and polluted. It's not uncommon to see people wearing surgical masks here. At first I thought this was leftover from SARS, but then realized that they are trying not to breathe in all the pollution. All of this would be much more tolerable if I didn't have a bad cold. I've been to dirty and polluted places before, but I was also feeling much, much better. My stomach is no longer bothering me, but now I have this stupid cold and I've been miserable. There have been good times, but for the most part, dealing with the city has been made much more difficult since I've been sick. The heat here is incredible. I've never sweated so much in my entire life! And watch out if the sun comes out! We are hopefully going to Chiang Mai tomorrow and my opinion should change. Chiang Mai shouldn't be this crazy.

Here are some of the interesting things we've seen here:

There are numerous options for getting around the city, however, there isn't one that will take you throughout the entire city. It's often necessary to use many different modes of transport. They have a subway, a skytrain, buses (regular and with air-con) and river and canal boats. Sounds pretty crazy, huh?

We set off to take a canal boat trip the other day and it was pretty neat. The canal boats are smaller than the river boats. Those things dock and leave within a matter of seconds. People are just so used to jumping on and off that I didn't want to be the one holding everyone up - nor did I want to end up in the canal. The boats are long and just have benches across. There's no room to stand up in the boat. There are normally 2 guys who stand on the outside edge of the boat that are in charge of collecting the fare and docking the boat. They must have incredible balance to do this job as the wake that the other boats create is pretty big. I had wanted to get a picture of these guys in action, but they work so fast there was no way we could get them. These guys also wear helmets. We realized what they were for once we passed under the first bridge. The boats are small, but when going under a bridge, the guys on the side of the boat need to duck and they actually have to lower the roof of the boat - which is really just a tarp attached to a metal pole. There are also tarps on the side of the boat that can be raised and lowered. These are so you don't get wet as the boat is zooming through the water.

Yesterday, we visited the main temples in Bangkok. We only saw 3 and apparently there are about 300 temples in the city! It's very interesting architecture and some of the statues actually look Chinese. One of the temples we visited was Wat Po. It has a huge statue of Buddha. Buddha is lying on his side and it's just enormous. He's covered in goldleaf and his feat are decorated in mother of pearl. It's quite a sight. We also saw the Emerald Buddha is another temple. It's not actually emerald, but jade. It sits high up within the temple and is quite small compared to the huge Buddha in Wat Po. But, what I found interesting is that the emerald Buddha has his own wardrobe. They change him 3 times a year according to the season.

That's about all I can remember for now. Mark has me on so many different medicines so that I can feel better my mind is a bit fuzzy right now.

Pictures of Bangkok from April 22 - 25, 2005:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/album?.dir=fe0b&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/my_photos

Cockroaches, Rats and Elephants, Oh my!

The answer to the above riddle:

What is things you find on the streets of Bangkok.

That's right, we're in Thailand. And it is pretty exciting to be in a place that has been on my list for so long. Bangkok is quite a modern city and it's pretty large making it overwhelming, especially coming from Bali. We felt very comfortable in Bali. We had our favourite warungs and we picked up the important words quickly. The thai language is a bit more difficult, not to mention the written format.

We've just had time enough to spend exploring our area as we arrived very late the other night. Coming out of our place tonight there are many stalls set up selling food. None more interesting than the man peddling a whole stall full of bugs. Yes, bugs. All different kinds too. Neither of us have the guts to try any - we aren't on Fear Factor after all. We've seen plenty of big cockroaches on the streets as well. Consequently, we saw no roaches in Bali and Australia has more cockroaches than I care to ever remember! The most fascinating sight of the night was the baby elephant that was on the street. I spotted him right away - after all what is more out of place than an elephant? My better judgment told me not to buy the sugar cane to feed it, but when the elephant stuck it's trunk out toward me, I couldn't resist. And of course, I loved every second of my elephant encounter.

Well, that's about all for now. We're still getting our bearings before we head out for some serious exploration Thailand. And we definitely need to learn how to order because both of us have gotten some pretty interesting dishes the past couple of meals. My mouth is still on fire!

Bali Part II

Bali was a constant assault on all of my senses. I figured that after a couple of days I would get used to everything, but it was just as exciting on the last day as it was on the first.

I guess where I'd like to start this entry is with the Balinese people. They are wonderful! Of course, there are touts and scam artists. More often than not, the Balinese people we came across were super friendly and helpful. A little cultural respect and basic language skills goes a long way. It was hard to leave our favourite "warungs" (restaurants or food stalls) as the people who ran them were very nice and always dished up great food. What is even more interesting is their reaction to the horrible bombings that occurred in Kuta on October 12, 2002. They are truly upset and outraged by this incident and not only because it severely affected their tourism industry. They are outraged that terrorists would come there and bomb their home. They let you know that none of the people involved with the bombing were Balinese. They also stress that they are peaceful. I actually saw a couple of locals wearing shirts that said F--- terrorists. They also sell these to the tourists too.

We managed to do some day trips from Kuta so that we could see more of the real Bali. Kuta is very touristy. I kid you not, there's a Bubba Gump Shrimp Factory restaurant and store. Something tells me you won't be finding any locals in there.

Our first adventure sent us into the capital city of Denpasar. It was much different than what I expected. I guess I expected bigger and more modern buildings. There were drastically less tourists there so that made it nice. We took a "bemo" bus, which is a public bus. It wasn't that uncomfortable or crowded, but Mark and I were drenched in sweat throughout the ride, while the locals seemed just fine in jeans! We ended up visiting a bird market - which was both interesting and sad. It's always difficult for me to see animals in small cages, but not a sight we'll see back in Toronto. As a side note I should mention that chickens and roosters seem to be almost as common as cats and dogs in Bali. There were chickens roaming the streets and you could always hear a rooster crowing somewhere. We also visiting the main produce market in Denpasar. Let me tell you, it was quote the spectacle. I'm sure that the pictures will barely do it justice. It was huge and overwhelming and completely chaotic! Definitely a worthwhile experience.

We took a day trip to the town of Ubud, which is north of Kuta. It's the arts and crafts capital of Bali. We ended up with 2 sarongs and a painting. Along the way we saw quite a few temples and a monkey forest.

We spent another great day traveling further north to see yet more temples and the famous rice terraces. Bali is a beautiful country! This day we some some of the most important temples in Bali, including 2 that were set in magnificent surroundings. One was set on a very peaceful lake in between 2 mountains while the other was set right on the ocean. It's easy to see why those spots were chosen. The rice terraces were equally impressive. To best utilize the land, they build terraces into the hillsides to grow rice. It was so brilliantly green and beautiful - we could have stayed all day just staring at rice.

The inevitable happened in Bali - I got traveler's diarrhea. For 2 days I was unable to eat and drink. Luckily, we had designated those days to rest. I was pretty much unable to go very far from the place we were staying. I figured it was coming. I had been tempting fate all week by drinking fresh juice and eating other questionable things. Hopefully this just makes my body able to deal with it quicker in the future. Consequently, it must have been something we both ate because Mark's tummy didn't feel great either, but he was better after 15 minutes while it took me 2 days! I told him that's the difference between growing up playing in the dirt in Rochester, NY versus playing in dirt on a commune in China. He told me a story how he once got pretty sick from eating spoiled chicken kidneys at a road side stand in China when he was there years ago. I know what everyone is thinking so no need to comment. I told him that I probably would have died if I had eaten spoiled chicken kidneys if my body couldn't even handle some bad OJ.

Pictures from Bali (April 10 -19, 2005):
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/album?.dir=ea9c&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/my_photos

Bali!

I have touched down in South East Asia and I love it! It's everything I expected and it's thrilling to be here. I figured that we'd be crossing over into another world when we landed in Bali. In a way I was correct, but it hasn't been as difficult as I expected. Bali is a cheap vacation spot for Aussies. Right now, we are in Kuta. An area that is heavily populated by tourists. There are plenty of McDonald's, Pizza Huts, KFCs and Starbucks to fill a craving. Although, if you ask me, it's pretty sad that you come to such an interesting country and camp out in a Starbucks or onlyt hang out by the pool of the hotel - all day, every day. We are hoping to move to a less touristy area in the next few days as we are itching to see the real Bali. (or at least as real as we can get.)

I don't know what else to say to describe this place. It's a combination of all the senses combined. It can be loud with motorbikes scooting around the alleyways, there are temples and what look like ancient buildings all over mixed with more modern buildings. It's incredibly hot! I've been sweating buckets since we arrived. Our plane landed at 11pm and it was 31 degrees. There's never any relief from the heat and humidity. I seem to be adjusting though. Each day I've been sweating a little less. Mark's clothes were even drenched the first day. And of course, we've been enjoying the food. We feast for dinner - ordering appetizers and multiple main dishes. On average, we spend about 6 dollars for a very good dinner. I've also been enjoying the fresh fruits and juices. There's nothing like fresh guava juice for about 50 cents!

Hope everyone is doing well!

I held a koala!!

And yes, there are pictures to prove it! Unfortunately, we still don't have the time to get the pictures on the web :(

The last blog left off at Byron Bay, the quaint hippie town. From Byron Bay we moved into the state of Queensland and an area called the Gold Coast. We settled down in a town called Surfer's Paradise. I had assumed that Surfer's would be similar to Byron Bay and I was completely off the mark. While Bryon Bay is a nice small town with no highrises, Surfer's is packed with hotels all along the beach. The Gold Coast area must be a popular vacation spot for the Aussies. A bit overdeveloped for my liking, but it was still a neat place to see. It reminded both Mark and I of the Torremolinos area in the south of Spain. All the hotels fighting for the best spot on the beach. One thing that Surfer's has over Torremolinos is a great beach. And you can definitely understand the name once you see the waves! There is only a very small section of the beach that lifeguards patrol because the water is so rough. It can pull you out to see in no time at all. Mark and I jumped in for some fun, albeit cautious fun. We were having a great time until my back was turned and a huge wave came. It knocked me down and in no time I had a mouth full of salt water. It was not pleasant. We decided it was time to get out of the water. We had wanted to hang out and enjoy the beach, but because it was so windy the sand just whipped against your skin. Not that pleasant either. We spent the rest of the day exploring Surfer's.

We then headed to Brisbane. And for me, we were going to Brisbane for one thing and one thing only - to hold a koala! The Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, which is just 11km outside of town is great. I had found it on the internet in the months prior to doing the research for this trip. I knew we HAD to go there. The biggest attraction is the koalas, but they actually have quite a bit of other stuff to keep you entertained. We headed right to the koala cuddling section first. I couldn't stand to be there knowing that the koalas were just waiting for me! Surprisingly, there wasn't much of a line at all to hold one. Cuddling a koala is free, but they ask that if you want to take your own pictures, that you also pay them to take yours. I coughed up the $15 in no time and made sure Mark got plenty of extra pictures. They are just as cute and soft as they look. While they have some serious claws, they never really dug into you. I would have held it all day if they let me. We tried to talk to the koala keeper as much as possible so I could keep holding it, but I had to let it go eventually. We went back at the end of the day and got to hold another one. This time is was a little one. Not a baby, but a 2 year old. They still aren't full size by that age.
We spent the rest of the day feeding kangaroos and wallabies and looking at the other animals that Lone Pine has.

Of course the day that we had planned on seeing the city of Brisbane turned out to be rainy and gloomy. But we still proceeded with the plan. We bought a day pass for the transit system which allowed us to take the buses and ferries. The have a ferry system that runs through the river. Despite the weather, the ferries were a good way to see the city. Both nights we were in Brisbane we were treated to wonderful meals by my cousin from Newcastle. Thanks Steve and Casey - we had a great time! They were in Brisbane for the weekend and took time to have supper with us.

From Brisbane, we flew over to Darwin in the Northern Terroritories. I wasn't too thrilled to be visiting Darwin. First it was hot and humid - very hot and humid. Then, there are very few places you can actually swim in Darwin. They have a beautiful harbour and you can never swim there. As our bus driver from the airport warned - they pull out about 200 crocs a year from the harbour. If the crocs don't get you, the box jelly fish will. What a crazy place. I thought for sure we'd see a croc walking down the street, but I was told they never venture that far. Darwin was practically a ghost town. We arrived on a Saturday afternoon expecting things to be open and nothing was. Apparently things open in the evening again, but there was really only life on one street - the street with the majority of hostels. I guess that's not too bad considering Darwin only has about 6 main streets. We walked around the entire city and decided that we wouldn't be entertained for 5 days and that we needed to change out flight to the next day. The flight to Bali left at 10pm so we would still have another whole day to explore. We decided to do a day tour of one of the parks in the area. Parks with waterfalls and swimming holes where we assured we could swim safely. The first part of the tour invovled a jumping croc tour. They take you out on a boat on the Adelaide River - home to about 2000 crocs. Once they spot a croc, they dangle meat over the side of the boat so that the croc jumps up to get it. People can be real dumb and here's a great example. The boat isn't that big. It was pretty stable, but since there were a lot of people on the cruise, not everyone can rush over to one side of the boat. Simple logic. The captain promised that they would feed crocs on both sides. Once the croc was fed on one side he would turn the boat around and feed the croc on the other. Simple - everyone gets to see. Well, no one seemed to understand that and kept rushing to whatever side the croc was one. No matter how many times they kept telling us that the crocs view us as one big piece of meat- these people never got that we'd all be croc food if the boat flipped and sank. Stupid people. Next, we were driven out to a very nice waterfall and plunge pool. We were promised no crocs and I believed the guide. We were pretty high up at that people and as we learned on the cruise, crocs are lazy. None of them would climb up all that way. Plus, the water was crystal clear - a croc would be spotted immediately. After the 12 hour tour, we headed to the airport to say goodbye to Australia. South East Asia was only a couple of hours away!

Pictures for Brisbane and Darwin:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/album?.dir=8916&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/my_photos

Byron Bay and koalas

We are continuing our trip north up to Brisbane and have stopped in Byron Bay. We heard from numerous people that we just couldn't miss this place. We're finding that it's not exactly our cup of tea, but we did have great fun at the beach yesterday.

Byron Bay is the eastern most point in Australia. It's a town inhabited by hippies and tons of backpackers who come here for the sun, surfing and parties. Luckily, we landed ourselves in a guesthouse called
"A Peaceful Place" and it lived up to it's name. It was nice, quiet and peaceful and we actually got some good sleep. Just what we were looking for after being on the go every day. (I know we've had it so rough :) I have a feeling we would have headed out after 1 night if we had stayed at the usual hostel. A hostel would not have been peaceful nor quiet.

We have been much happier with the accomodations up north. It seems that the farther north you go the better the hostels are. We haven't ended up in a dump since Sydney. In fact, we stayed at an extremely nice hostel in Coffs Harbour. It was brand new and had a pool. I wish we could have stayed longer. I've also found myself a "job." Hostelz.com was looking for people to review hostels while they travel. They only pay $7 USD per review and require that you take a couple of pictures and write a couple of paragraphs. Not that bad. I figure we'll be staying in quite a few between now and when we return. Plus, I have already been keeping a log of everyplace we've stayed so that I can create a blog with my recommedations at the end of the trip.

We had a great day at the beach yesterday. We played in the water for a while and had fun letting the waves carry us back to shore. In the afternoon we headed to the town of Lismore and a nature reserve called Tucki Tucki. It's a reserve specifically for koalas. We were hoping to spot some wild ones. We went through the entire reserve and didn't see any. It isn't very big and we figured we'd be able to spot them easily. Finally, right at the end Mark spotted one high up in a tree. You could barely make out what it was, but it was definitely a koala - the ears gave it away. On our way back to the car, right by the road, wouldn't you know there was one taking a nap. He was in a tree, but not very high up. He was just high enough so he was out of reach. He put on a little show by stretching and scratching a bit, but just kept on going back to sleep. I guess we couldn't convince him to come down and play. We left the reserve and went to another lookout point. This one was in the town of Lismore and right in a neighborhood. We saw another koala and this time he was eating. It was dark at this point and that's when they start to become active. He was pretty high up, but we could see him reaching to get the best leaves all the way on the end of the branch. So we ended up spotting 3 koalas in the wild. Pretty neat. Although, we will still be visiting the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary which is just outside of Brisbane. They allow you to hold a koala and get your photo taken with it. I can NOT leave Australia without this taking advantage of this opportunity!

Today we head into Queensland (this is state where Brisbane is located) to a town called Surfers Paradise. We spend a night here and then head to Brisbane. Only a little over a week left in Australia. I'm a bit nervous and excited to get to Asia. One thing I can't wait for is the fruit!! Fruit here is very expensive, even fruit that's home grown. Can you believe they sell bananas for as much as $4 a kilo? We've found them for a little cheaper, but no where near the 40 cents a pound we pay back home. They even grow bananas here. Oh, and if you think that New Zealand has cheap kiwi fruit, think again. We waited to get kiwi until we got to NZ and it was $4 a kilo as well. Mark promises lots of tropical fruit when we hit Asia!

Well, I have to get going. Time to move on.

Hope everyone is well!

Newcastle to Port Macquarie

We had an absolutely fantastic time with my relatives in Newcastle! It was very sad to have to leave them after only a couple of days. It was also very weird to be visiting them. I still can't quite get my head around being so far away from home.

We got a great tour of Newcastle on the first day. There's plenty of nice beaches in the area and Nina pointed out all of the popular wedding spots along the way :) The next day we spent at the vineyards that are about an hour and a half outside of town. It's a beautiful area full of vineyards. I'm sure you can easily spend an entire weekend sampling all of the wine. We tried some very nice wine and had a lovely picnic.

The next day they took us to the BlackButt reserve. This isn't too far from where they live and the reserve has koala bears, wombats and wallabies. The wombats were very active and cute. I was ready to take them home. You can get very close to the koalas in the reserve, but again you can't touch them. Nina and Michael had to drag me out of there as I was facinated with the animals. We were on our way to Port Stephens which is about an hour and a half north of Newcastle. This is a bay of water that is known for having a pod of dolphins that live there. We headed out on a dolphin watch cruise and hoped for the best. And boy we got a show!!! There were so many dolphins we couldn't even count. It was fantastic. We got very close as well, although I still couldn't manage to reach out and touch them. Some came right up under the front of the boat and they were riding our wake for a bit. Really, really neat.

The last night in Newcastle we got everyone together for a BBQ and had a great time. We prepared our now world famous Korean BBQ ribs for everyone and every single piece went! There were even requests for the recipe. We will just have to come back to see everyone again.

We moved on from Newcastle to the town of Port Macquarie. This is one town where Mark had gotten a job offer. We thought we'd check it out to see what we were missing. It would have definitely been a cool place to hang out for 6 months. Plenty of beaches and a cute town. It's too bad it didn't work out, but maybe in the future.

We are spending the next few days heading up to Brisbane and then are heading out to Darwin on the 9th of April. Darwin will be our last stop in Australia and then the Asia portion of our trip begins. I think we are in for a big shock. We've had it very easy so far in terms of being in an English speaking country. We also just checked the weather for Thailand. The high there is 36 Celsius and the low is 29 Celsius! That's just insane. Should be quite the adventure.

Pictures for Port Macquarie to Brisbane:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/album?.dir=3fca&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/my_photos