Bangkok

After being at (and in) the beach and being so relaxed it was strange to find myself in a HUGE, crazy, noisy, polluted city - luckily Bangkok was also still full of friendly Thais and good food. After a while the size and craziness of it starts to get a bit more manageable and things start looking much more interesting ;0) This is a street called Patpong, it was right next to my hotel so I hit in the night I got there (this is around midnight or so) on my way out dancing... people pretty much just use the sidewalks for everything from food to selling junk (very aggresively - that's the worse thing about Thailand), I don't think they really know what "zoning" laws mean ;0)



The next day I took a cruise up the Changii river (which is so crowded with boats it looks like a highway) which is a great way to get around as it gets you away from the crowd and give you really good views of the most interesting historical places in the city.

My first stop off was the Temple of the Emerald Budda - it was a very large, ornate complex of temples and really fun to just get lost in... Unfortunately the temple with the Emerald Budda (which is really made of Jade and caused lots of wars for a few hundred years) was closed, but you can almost see it through the doorway... Down below were all kinds of Buddists burning incense, praying and making sacrifices (ok just leaving flowers and fruit)... this one picture does not do all the temples and ornate building justice... it was fantastic!



I also visited the Royal Palace which was very grand and (along with the other tourists) pestered the very formal stiff gurads in front of the doors for pictures...



After that (and my first Pad Thai lunch in Thailand.... which wasn't as good as Brown Sugar!!!) I headed for THE Bangkok temple... I can't remember what it was called right now but it translates as "Temple of the Rising Sun" - it was huge and the best thing was you could climb up for some great views of the city - by the way, those steps are LOTS steeper than you think..

The temple was right across teh street from the Temple of the Reclining Budda (with the largest reclining budda in the world in it) - this is one of the holiest sites in Thailand and was well worth having to wear full pants, long sleeve shirt and shoes all day in hot, muggy Thai weather so I could get inside... it was enormous (you can kind of get the idea from how high the people's heads are next to his feet)...

There were also about 1,000 (maybe exactly) other Budda's spread around the temple - it was pretty fascinating...

There's so much more I could say about Thailand and Bangkok but I'm in Singapore now (I know I still need to get some pics of Macau and Hong Kong [which I like A LOT] on here - hopefully I'll find some internet time soon - it was hard there as I finally had a friend with me (David) so we kept very busy the whole week ;0)

I'll try to do an update soon - for now I'm having a great time and looking forward to my 8 hours or so I have to explore this city - I'm off for a Singapore Sling ;0)

Phuket, Thailand

I arrived into Thailand from the super hot deserts of Australia and walked out to super-hot and humid Jungle Islands... and it was fantastic! After a beautiful drive through jungle mountains (mostly populated by small villages) and up and down through gorgeous white-sand beaches - I arrive @ Patong Beach, got myself sorted at the hotel (I could afford a nice hotel with exchange rates of 30:1, so it was a VERY nice change from the hostels I'd restricted myself to in Australia ;0) and then I headed straight for the beach and dived into the nice warm ocean... this was only broken up for the next several hours with some beer and really good [and REALLY spicey... people weren't kidding] Thai food ;0) I had my favorite first - Tom Ka Gai soup... yummmmm.

I was so relaxed that when it started raining I just kept on swimming (the water was actually warmer than the rain anyway ;0) and stayed out there until the sunset... it was really nice watching it go down over the Andaman Sea.

I walked around a bit that night and absorbed some of the craziness of Thailand (probably Asia in general actually). Streets are super clogged up with cars, motorcycles, buses, bikes and people shooting across the road whenever there's a bit of a gap in the traffic - Oh and one little motorbike usually has 1-3 people on it, usually with the woman in back holding a baby up and playing with it while the taxi cab is litteraly right on the back of the bike going 30-40 miles/hour... The "sidewalks" (they're really more of the 'not black' part of the road most of the time' are just as crowded with people all jostling up the left side to go forward [generally] with just as many coming at you on the right). It's all very 'survival of the fittest', whatever thing is bigger - car, bus or crowd of people always gets the right of way. The crazy thing is that it works really well, everyone gets around and I haven't seen anyone get hurt yet - but I'll tell you, it's enough to make me wish I'd said yes to the guy who tried to sell me "smokes" in one darkish road I went down ;0)

I found myself in an interesting part of town after a nice fish dinner (prepared right on the sidewalk - makeshift kitchen, servers, tables & all - and it was the whole fish deep-fried and covered in delicious red curry sauce, yum) watched my first katoey show (female impersonaters dressed up in ornate outfits doing really good lip synching in the midst of some pretty stunning dance theatrics) it was very fun to watch but I still got to bed @ a reasonable time as I had to get up the next morning for my 1st scuba dive ;0)

My first dive was @ Koh Dok Mai - it's this crazy little island literally just sticking up in the middle of the ocean. After some equipment and getting to know my dive buddy, we jumped in and I have to say that my course training all came back pretty fast... I was able to NOT slam into the coral below, control my breathing, and actually watch the fish - which were in the thousands all around me. Little ones, big ones - yellow, green, pink you name it swimming amongst huge red fan corals, white corals - I also saw 2 or 3 moray eels and these neat looking Scorpian Fish that look just like the coral there were up against (I didn't have an underwater camera so I found some pics on the web for the fish).

After that we had a break as we headed for the Phi Phi Islands (which were in the Leo DeCaprio film 'The Beach' - terrible movie, but man - location, location, location. The islands were really something to behold as we came up to them - we actually dived the two smaller Koh (islets) next to them.

The last dive was the best - I was finally totally relaxed and able to just drift around with the current and watch then get in nice and close to the sea wall to see all the little fish. There was some minor embarrasment on the 2nd dive when I jumped in and realized my weight belt had come off (you're supposed to hold on to it when you jump... woops) so they had to go all the way back to the boat to get me another one [guess I'm not THAT fat after all ;)] - however... while we were all waiting we were looking below us and a big ol' Leopard Shark swam by!!! It was very cool looking, kind glad we weren't right down with it though ;0) Also saw a Lionfish on that dive which was really fun to watch...

I made it back in town that night just in time to get down to the beach for the 1st night of the Loy Krathong festival. It's held on the 3rd Lunar Cycle in November of every year to celebrate a river/water goddess. People on the beach all bought these giant square shaped cloth baloons with an open flame on the bottom - when it fills up with hot air it eventually (with some gentle pushing) floats off into the sky where it joins up with hundreds of others and just floats off until it looks like they're joining the stars... it's very nice... of course I had to buy one - Mine is one of the 3 next to the full moon ;0) They also sell fireworks that you shoot off from your hand (like roman candles.. it was lots of fun)

After that I sat and had a great and SPICEY squid salad and watch some traditional Thai dancing and more fireworks...

The next morning I hung out on the beach for a few hours - NICE...

Perth

I got into Perth from Yulara with just enough time (5 hours) to grab a shuttle to the city and check it out.. It was great.. the people there are very freindly and it's a big, modern clean place.. I liked it the best next to Syndey I think... a welcome change from Alice and Adelaide ( a little too rough for my tastes...)

I took a walk around town... there was a cool statue of roos with a bigger statue containing all of the important metal ores in the area (the mining of which had really built the city)



Then I walked up a hill and got a great view of the city... it was a hard walk so I had to take in a bit of beer (or bitter as they call it here... yuck.. i have found least bitter one I can ;0)



It was a nice sunny day, I ended it with another beer (yes I've been drinking a few of those here) at the Brass Monkey and then got out to the airport to head up to Phuket!!!

Uluru

EARLY the next morning (well at least I got 4 hours of sleep) I got on board a tour bus and headed down the highway toward Uluru...

Not too much to see along the way (although I still found myself fascintated by the red sands of the outback.. in between taking 15 min catnaps...). We stopped off a camel farm (used for racing actually) so I could see what I'd eaten the night before ;) I also a dingo up close (which looked like the nicest house dog you could imagine... pretty ferocious in the wild though).... and some wild horses along with way (they call them Brommies out here)....

We got into Yulara (next to Uluru - Ayer's Rock) just in time for me to get down there and take a hike around the base of it (the Aboriginals had closed the climb to the top down to the heat... it was only in the 90's... I think they take whatever excuse they can to keep people off of it... they see it as a sacred place... which is also why there are signs all over the place saying not to take pictures of the rock - hopefully I didn't steal any soles or whatever from the rock, but I did take a few pics ;0)

There were some very cool formation in the rock as you got closer to it. Including some that looked like very familiar objects...

It's funny - the aboriginals had all these really intricate stories about the creation (or dreamtime as they call it) incorporating spirits of animals (which are really people) into the rock formations around them... such as the giant bad tempered lizard Lungkata below).... but they seemed to totally ignore what I think is obviously a huge whale... maybe they hadn't made it down to the ocean by then...

There are very few rock paintings by the aboriginals as they used materials that were easily washed away by rain and really depended on oral storytelling more than pictoral ones anwyay... but there were a few around...

I also found some "real" monsters along they way... that is one NASTY bug !!!

I finally found myself in an ancient waterhole that had been used for thousands of years by animals and aboriginals alike for thousands of years and had a quick nap before hooking up with the tour bus for a trip back out to watch the susnet on Uluru... it was MAGNIFICANT ;0)

Then we headed back to the Outback Pioneer Hostel and I took a dip in the pool and had some kangaroo for dinner - the backpackers were all singing drunken country songs at the bar so I made it an early night...

Alice Springs

I got into Alice Springs in the center of the outback just in time to grab a rental car and head out for a small drive into the mountains of the outback... I first went to the Ormistead Gap... it was pretty cool.. but the best thing about it was a huge water whole surrounded by rocks with crazy lizards all over them... when you get to close they stand up on two legs and run away upright, it was really funny to watch (I have a video for later viewing ;0):

Then I continued on down the road ) - I didn't have enought time to get out to King's Canyon but it looked great from the distance...

I wasn't too bothered though as I'd seen a lot of the outback at this point.. I was however pretty hot.. so I stopped off at a large water hole (tried to tell myself that crocodiles weren't found this far into the outback) and took a very refreshing swim in it ;0)

After my cool down (and a nice big ol' Magnum Ice Cream from the gas station) I headed back towards the "city" stopping off at the Ocre Pits where aboriginals used to get different colored clays to paints their bodies with:

And then I ended the day at Simmon's gap and was lucky enough to find some rare Black Footed Rock Wallabies drinking from the water hole there... they were very skitish... fun to watch!

After the sunset (which mean I had to drive VERY slowly so not to hit all the marsupials around) I went back to Alice Springs, took a shower and hooked up with my Irish friend and a few other girs @ a crazy bar where I ate Camel pie (really... it tasted a lot like Venison) and then got a little too drunk and ended up dancing with them to bad 80's songs ;0)

Alice Springs (or The Alice) was fun and it was great to see an "outback town"... but the aboriginals who make up 20% of the popoulation are pretty scary there.... it's mostly the alcoholics who have been kicked out there tribes and have nowhere else to go.. which means lots of desperate, not to happy, drunk people lurking around in the dark... I drove all the girls home in my rental car then ran from the droppoff back to my hotel... fun to visit but more for the country around it...