Living in Bondi

G'day.....we've now been in Australia for just over 3 months. Can't believe how time flies. We spent the first few weeks living in hostels in the city, in Coogee, then finally in Bondi where we spent a few weeks looking for a flat....

At the end of april, we did a road trip from Sydney to Adelaide via Melbourne. That was great and here are some of the photos.....

1. Great Ocean Drive just south of Sydney....

Joe, Me and Ben stopping off at Bombie Beach for an early morning swim in the sea!

"Wilsons Prom" walking to "Squeaky Beach" . This is where the bushfires were at their worst in February '09

Sydney!

Hi all, we have safely arrived in Sydney following our month's travells in Thailand. Lots of stuff to do sorting out jobs, admin etc so not too many updates or photos for now. Will be sure to post some of Australia up here soon though. Hope all is well in the UK xx

Koh Phi Phi & Phuket

Koh Phi Phi was lovely, we had a great two days here (Tues and Wednesday) including doing another "Fun Dive" (Scuba). The visibility was fantastic - about 20metres.

On Tuesday night, we walked up to the "viewpoint" and took a look at Koh Phi Phi from 300m up.....it really makes you think about all the devastation the Tsunami did in 2004. We also walked along the jungle path to Long Beach which was great for some snorkelling and sunbathing.

This morning (Thursday) we left Koh Phi Phi and arrived in Phuket. We are staying at Kamala beach on the west side of Phuket, it reminds us both a little of the spannish Costas!! Ok for 2 nights but wouldn't want to stay here long. It's full of Germans!! The room is nice with Air Con and TV so good for a couple of nights before our flight to Bangkok then our flight to Sydney on Saturday - where real life begins looking for jobs, accomodation etc! Aaaargh!

We are both healthy and well and looking forward to arriving in Sydney. Fingers crossed flights are on time etc.

Love Shazza + Joe xx

Last Day in Koh Lanta

hello everybody!!!

today is monday 23rd, were wtill in Bamboo Bay on Koh Lanta, so quiet, chilled down here we kinda decided to stay for a while. We have been busy bee's tho...

yesterday (Sunday) we did a 4 island snorkelling trip, highlights include finding Nemo and lots of his cousins in 1m of water, a couple of black and white clownfish, a huge 2m ish black and white sea snake, lots of other shoals of fish that were very inquisitive, the emerald cave that was jellyfish heaven and some superb views and beaches with turqouise/emerald seas.

Saturday we hired a Kayak for the day and did som kayaking to the nature reserve, then round the next bay to get a different sunset.

Friday we hired a scooter, two of us on one bike and we did a whole lap of the island which took quite a while, especially on some of the rougher roads, we ended up coming back early as the back wheel had a few broken spokes, but we're fine.

Thursday we snorkelled around our bay, and into the next bay. Lots of angel fish, 5 crayfish in holes, one small red seasnake, lots of batfish and angelfish.

Wednesday was our arrival day, and it was about 9:30-10pm by the time we eventually got to out place.

Bamboo Bay, words cannot do this place juistice, its at the very southern tip of Koh Lanta, there are only 3 resorts in the whole bay and its a mission to get here down potted, rugged dirt tracks but when you get here, WOW, it is breathtaking.

Very quiet and cut off, so unspoilt at the moment but am sure this will eventually change.

There is a huge, deserted beach, well apart from the crazy supercharged turbo crabs that shazza keeps chasing!!!

Tomorrow, (tuesday 24th) we are off to Koh Phi Phi, 90 mins boat ride, probably for 2 days. Then about 2 hours to Phuket where we will be for thursday and friday, then Sat morning we have a (90 min) 9am flight to Bangkok, where our plane for Australia leaves at 5pm. Cutting a little fine but we should have a few hours spare if it all goes Pete Tong!!!

So from Me and Her its all good out here, it almost rained the other day but so far we have been lucky with the weather, and apart from Shazza's burnt bum and my jellyfish stung arms were all good!!

cheers for reading, love to you all

joe and shazza

xxx

P.S James are you a father yet?...

Koh Lanta

Hi all,
We have now arrived in Koh Lanta. We arrived about 10pm on Wednesday evening (17/02). Thanks to a recommendation from some people we met in Chiang Mai, we are staying in a lovely place called Bamboo Bay Resort, what a paradise! Most of the photos here are from the bay that we are staying at. We even have our own hammock!

One more Dive in Koh Tao!

This afternoon (Monday), Joe and I are doing a "fun dive" in the water now that I have passed my PADI/SSI qualification. It should be brilliant! We have booked our travels for the next stop which will be Koh Lanta. We leave Koh Tao on an overnight boat at 11pm and get back to the mainland at 5am! Apparently the rules have changed around visas so we have to cross the Thai border and come back again to get a visa extension for 15 days - what a bugger, but luckily this only takes around 4hrs so no big panic! We are both looking forward to getting to Koh Lanta as a lot of people have told us it is amazing..... Everything else is all good, we are starting to get brown (slowly) and we have both been doing tons of snorkelling by the beach. The water is very shallow so we are seeing quite a few fish without having to swim to far out..... Time is flying by and we are having so much fun - it's nice to chill out - Australia feels like a lifetime away, but we get there on 1st March, so it's not really :)

right then, various picks of from top left along the rows kind off, if not just work it out!!!!...

1, View along beach, Koh Tao, Thailand.
2, Shazza after 1st day in water on diving course infront off our dive place, Big Blu, Koh Tao, Thailand.
3, Sunset, Koh Tao, Thailand
4, Shazza in Sunrise on boat to Koh Tao, Thailand
5, Busy Bangkok
6, Second puncture in half an hour, en route to Vientiane, border then Bangkok from Vang Vieng

7, Hemborw just hanging around as usual, Vang Vieng, Laos

8, Sunset, Vang Vieng, Laos

9, View across river, Vang Vieng, Laos

10, Me on bridge over river in Vang Vieng, Laos, just arrived

11, our boat along mekong river, Laos

12, Pak Beng, middle of nowhere in Laos

13, sunset on river in Laos

14, walking the gangplank!!

15, sunrise on Thai-Laos border (Chiang Kong-Huay Xai)

there, kinda in a way gets you back upto speed on where we are, sorry so many sunsets but we've seen so many good ones, still haven't seen anything like rain yet either....

shazza's on her 3rd day of dive course, second in the water and she's enjoying it (thank god...) so today they take her out to a dive and she goes to 12m, a little scary first time, though this morning its more theory work.

I'm doing a re-integration dive, been nearly 5 years since I last dived, but i'm out on the same boat as shazza, we'll both do 2 dives today, and she should finish her course tomorrow which was 8,100 Baht, or about 160 quid...Bargain!!

then tomorrow eveing its wales v england at midnight, and something else called valentines night....

as you can tell, Koh Tao is great, were in dive resort, air-con room for 10 quid 20m from beach!!!

last night I had a whole BBQ mackeral, and shazza had some huge prawns, its definitely a hard life. were away from main busy part and its lovely, not sure when were leaving, prob around tuesday then were off to koh Lanta which is apparantly even more beautiful, did i hear snow's on the way for you lot....

hope everyone is good and well, i'm off my tablets now and everything seems under control....

cheers now

joe

xxx

Koh Tao

hey hey hey everybody, jo-jo is back from the dead!!!
we are now safely in Koh Tao, an island about 70km from thai mainland, around 2x5 km or something like that.
Bangkok was busy yesterday, hot and smelly but we managed to book ourselves onto a bus leaving at 6pm, so that was the second night bus on the trot, meaning this moring after 2 nights on buses and a day walking around bangkok we smelt.... funnny!!
we got the boat at 7am, beautiful sunrise, and arrived at 10am, went to find accomodation only to find island pretty full, last night was a full moon so plenty of people were on route after partying.
find somewhere we did, and custy too tho a little pricey, 7 quid for a room, but it did have hot water and cable tv!!
shazza started her dive course today, i'm getting over my minor ailment, only on 2 sets of pils now and almost have control back of my body tho there was a time in vang vieng where i started getting a bit delirious but all's well now.
were here for about a week, will put up some photo's from the last week tomorrow as shazza will be busy getting wet and stuff so i'm in chilling mode.
sat 14th, valentines day but more importantly wales v england 6 nations, game kicks off midnight local time here, already found a bar showing it and shazza's delighted!!!
hope your all well back home, not sure how many people are reading this but hopefully its giving you a window into our world.
we've had a tough few days of travelling, but as soon as we got off the boat here we both knew it was worth it!!!
smell you later!!
joe

Bangkok

Finally we have arrived in Bangkok! It is currently about 6am and what else should we ge up to first thing than get on the internet!!! Joe is feeling a lot better. Luckily where we stayed in Laos, we were a 5 min walk from the local hospital and the drugs appear to be working. We made it on a 7hr bus to Ventiane (Capital of Laos) and then a 10hr bus from Ventiene to Bangkok (overnight). Our first bus from Vang Vieng to Ventiene was fraught with problems - we had TWO seperate punctures on the bus we were on with only one spare tyre! Spent a couple of hours sitting on the road waiting for the driver to go off and find a spare spare tyre! What a journey, but we're safe and now back in Thailand. Today I think we are going to organise an overnight bus to take us to Koh Tao - hopefully this is where I can do a scuba diving course and joe can relax a little. So glad things are getting back to normal!

Still in Laos!

We are still in Laos having an unusual day.....unfortunately we think poor Joseph may have Dysentery :( so he is sick in bed all day today. I have spent a lot of time reading my book and chilling out in a hammock today. We have a long long bus journey ahead of us tomorrow (Monday) to Bangkok - 4hrs in Laos then another 12 hrs to Bangkok - 16hrs total....
The weather is hot hot hot, yesterday we went caving, tubing and kyaking...it was really fun! we ended up watching a lot of people get very drunk and extremely sunburnt tubing down the river. Vang Vieng in Laos is like Ibiza!!! It's very westernised here. However the scenery here is amazing,.so not a bad place at all to spend an unexpected extra day. Poor Joe, I hope he gets better soon. The doc has given us MANY pills for him to take :( Hope everyone is coping well with the snow back in England!!

Laos

We arrived in Laos via Chang Kong in Thailand on Tuesday. We then took a slow boat for two days down the Mekong river which was really cool. Both days the slow boat took about 7 hrs!! Our first stop was Pak Beng which was a small town that was powered by genenerator so we had to make sure we were in bed by 10pm before the lights went out! We are now in Vang Vieng travelling south. We will stop here for a few days and tomorrow (saturday) we are doing some kayaking, some tubing and some caving - should be interesting.... both of us are looking forward to getting to the beaches in Southern Thailand.....we should be there in time for Valentines day! how sweet!

Chiang Mai

Hello everybody!! Joe is on the mike!!

Yeasterday we did the cooking course, which was awesome!! lots of super food, which we cooked and prepared ourselevs and then ate which was good!!

We then went around the sunday night market which was massive, good fun but soo busy!!

had a few drinks in this cool pub/bar which i'm sure has some interesting tales of years gone past....

Today we went to an elephant show which was amazing, got to see them doing lots of crazy stuff from football to painting, then we had a ride on one, as well as an oxen and cart!! finally we went down the river on bamboo rafts.

tomorrow we head to chiang khong, where we cross the border to Laos for a 2 day jaunt downriver to luang prabang, this should be reltively relaxing and out in the open so suncream and repellant needed!!

hope your all enjoying the snow, gutted we missed it!!

cheers then

Joe

Chang Mai 31/01/08

Well, it's the last day in January and we are now in Chang Mai, north of Bangkok. Took an overnight train for 12hrs to get here so we are spending the day chilling out! Tomorrow we have enrolled ourselves in a Thai cookery course so that we can become experts in Thai cooking. The best part is we get to eat everything that we cook tomorrow.....bring on the fatter bellies! The weather in Chang Mai is hot, but the air temperature is cooler than bangkok so feeling a little less stifling up in the mountains. No more news for now....will write again soon

Dusit Zoo - Bangkok 30/01/09

Today we went to the zoo in Bangkok to see some animals. we walked quite a way to find it, here are a few pics!

Hello from Bangkok! 29/01/09

I am writing this e-mail from an internet cafe in Bangkok. Well, we have been here just over 24hrs now and it is pretty hot - wearing my summer gear at last. We managed to get our luggage at the airport with no hassle then a bus into Bangkok from the airport. We manged to find our "guest house" pretty easily and after dumping our bags, went straight out for a beer on the famous Ko San Road! It was a bit like Magaluf! We are staying quite close to the busyness, but our guest house is in a very quiet street where we have a double room with a/c and hot shower! Today was our first day and have spent it walking around the Grand Palace and have taken many photos of Buddah's! We then walked for ages through the local Thai streets which was really interesting and found a chinese place for lunch where I had duck and rice for a pound! Lovely! We have bought our train tickets to travel north to Chang Mai tomorrow. The train leaves local time at 7:30pm and arrives in Chang Mai at 7:30am! I think we'll spend 3-4 days there and try some elephant trekking ang thai cookery course.

Our leaving do in Clapham Junction 24th Jan 2009

This photo was taken on the train home after our leaving do....

This is our travel blog....a space where we will post news of our travels.....