Si Phan Don

Well after another marathon bus trip we arrived at the Four Thousand Islands which is where the Mekong fans out and well there are a lot of islands. The island we stayed on was Don Det we found a nice place by the river and had our own bungalow which came equipped with a veranda and more importantly hammocks!(the picture to the left is the view from our balconey before sunset) The Hammocks were crucial as there is bugger all to do there except lie in a hammock have a beer and relax with a good book. The Guy who owned our bungalows was a nice old guy with a cheeky smile and a pot belly.
On our second day on the island we hired bikes (yep fee on a bike) to have a ride around Don Det and the next island Don Kong which was joined by an old French railway bridge.

This little cheeky monkey joined us for dinner, he also ran of with Jons smokes, another girls spoon, everyones serviettes, and took a girls juice and drank it, it was hysterical.

Xieng Khuan (Buddha Park)

April 14th
The second day of our stay in Vientiane we decided to get out of the city and escape the watery mayhem and go to the Buddha park... or so we thought.

(Sash, Laura, Amy, me)

Out tuktuk ended up being a moving target, and we were drenched within 5 minutes of getting in. The whole of Vientiane was still in Party Mode, every second house had loud music, lots of lao lao (rice wine) that they even stopped our tuktuk so we could have shots, and hoses, and big tubs of water. It seemed that it was rude to not stop, so everytime someone ran on to the road to slow our tuktuk down , our driver stopped and water tipped or thrown at us and our cheeks rubbed with talcum powder, this happened at every house we passed with screams of 'SABA DEE PII MAI'. But finally 1 whole hour later we got to the park.

It was created in 1958 by a Luang Pu Bunleua Sulilat who was a self proclaimed yogi-priest-shaman who wanted to merge hindu and buddhist mytholgy into a whole, and the concrete statues he built are pretty cool.

And incase you were wondering - the guy on the statue is playing the flute with his nose.

The photo of the street, is from our guesthouse balcony, under the awning was packed with people, and they started partying at 7.30 everymorning turning on the stereo, till 8 at night, it was so much fun.

Vientiane and more water

Lao New Year is the same time as Thai, so we went from one party to another… that lasted 3 days. After the looong trip from Bangkok by bus in bumper to bumper traffic, because everyman and his dining room table wanted to go back to his home town for New Years (No jokes, 15 people plus all their worldly belongings pile into the tray of utes to travel 4-5 hrs home) (Everyone owns utes) (No one we meet traveling knows what we mean when we say Ute..) , but anyway so we cross the border into Laos and then get to Vientiane which is the capital if you didn’t know, and found exactly the same thing going on there, except more creative… as well as having water thrown at you.. you get food dye, talcum powder, water balloons and some kind of Lao dessert that looks like fish eggs and that you can’t get rid of for days. The guesthouse we choose to stay at ended up being Laos New Years HQ. Everyone congregated on our corner to ambush and attack the passing cars, utes, bicycles, tuktuks, buses (who for some reason left their windows open knowing fully well people would tip water through them, same with cars.. and then they looked indignant when they were soaked). The only people that had amnesty were people with their backpacks on and police.. one Lao boy pretended to throw water at a passing cop, and the cop got of his bike and got all high and mighty and took the boys bucket off him and drove off… when there were 50 people all standing around him with buckets and guns. 20 Lao kids would be in the back of a ute with a big tub of water just spraying it on everyone one that went passed, infact that’s pretty much what the whole population of Vientiane did. And drink Beer Lao and dance to Shakira and 50 cent.

We met a lot of really cool people that first day while mucking about with the water, Lao and travelers, and we all ended up hanging out the rest of our time in Vientiane.

Songkran water festival (Thai New Year)

Bankok photos

Slllleeeepppy tiger



The Bridge over the river Kwai.



Khao san Rd.



Jon's new tatoo

This is the park where every night they have free aerobics and we'd go watch



And to the right is the start of the Songkran festival. Thai New Year.
The basic idea is that you are meant to tip or sprinkle a few droplets of water on another's backs to bless them for the new year.... this has turned into dumping buckets of water on everyone you see and squirting everyone who has remained dry with a water pistol. Its INSANE. iNSANELY AWESOME FUN. You feel slightly guilty being theres a drought in Australia and all but...Little kids come up and smear white clay on your cheeks to bless you... and you just can't not buy a water pistol and join in.
Everyone's in on it.... lil kids, big kids, shopkeepers, monks,mums, dads, not police, but tuk tuk drivers even little old grannies.
Stay tuned for more water filled fun in Vientiane, Laos....... and more pic's of Bangkok

Bangkok -Temples and then tigers with temples

The Giant Reclining Buddha in/ at Wat Pho. It was Giant and Reclining... but it wasn't all gold. There were huge black painted patches.

We took a river bus to look at all the temples because it's literally the coolest option. The next one and probably our favourite was Wat Arun, Temple of Dawn, it wasn't as bling and glitzy as the others, but was covered in tiles ... and a mix of hindu and buddhist imagery.... and possibly the steepest steps known to mankind

The next day we had organised a tour of Kanachuburi, where the bridge over the river Kwai is. We went to the WW2 cemetery and the war museum. The cemetery was really quite heartbreaking seeing that a lot of the soldiers were our age now. But we must have looked doubly upset and grief stricken by it as both of us had conjunctivitis and were constantly dabbing our eyes with tissues, the other guys on out tour thought we were really touched by it.

We went on a train as well... puffing billy is better.

But the real reason we went on the tour was to see the tigers at the tiger temple.

Before you go in, you sign a waiver to your life.

And then you go in.. and get to pat tigers.

Now the brochure says the reason they are so docile is because they are hand reared and its the middle of the day and they are sleepy.... but its a tiger. We were a bit skeptical, but then they're monks running the place so you don't want to think badly of them. But we got to touch REAL LIFE TIGERS. And play with baby tiger cubs.

There were also cows and pigs and peacocks running around the farm too.

But now due to my woeful computer skills I have manged to loose the pictures of us and sleepy tigers, and Jon took computer cable when he went to get a beer... so I might join him for a Chang and then drag him back so you can see for yourself.

James Bond Island

Phuket is .... well more to the point Patong beach is crazy. Phuket town is really laid back, we stayed there the first night in the hotel they used in the movie 'The Beach'. Its the one at the very beggining where he meets the crazy guy with the map. We went out for tea at a cute restaurant that didn't have a menu and the owner didnt speak any English, so we just mimed what we wanted and hoped for the best. While waiting a little girl came out of the kitchen and began screaming her head off.... she didn't stop the whole time we where there, she ended up standing on the table next to us naked screeching like a monkey , no one else came in the whole time we where there. The food we got was pretty nice though. We found a nice bar for the rest of the night and the owner even gave us free shots.

The next day we got a bus to Patong. If the tuktuk drivers and tailors and waiters and people tryin to sell you 'exclusive genuine hats' dont' drive you mental, then maybe you will like this place.
We did a boat trip to James Bond Island one of the days and that was amazing. We had a really serious amateur photographer guy who was our kayaking guide, he would take at least 10 photographs of us at each photo stop, using different angles, jumping in the water or on to a rock to get a good photo, if I tried to take one, he would stop kayaking and say ' you, IIIIII take photo!' He was really pushy too, and would nudge all the other kayaks out of the way so we got the best spot to look at something. On the boat we scored a free ladyboy dance, it was a far better show than the one we saw the night before in banglar road.

Possably the best thing about our stay in Patong was going to the muay thai (thai boxing). We saw some great bouts though some of them seemed quite unfairly matched, big muscly English guy vs. petite Thai. They even had a bout between two six year olds, who had six packs! So cute, yet so violent.

THE rock, in the James Bond movie. Does anyone know if it was a good movie?