Koh Tao

We're on Koh Tao at the moment, we've been here for about 5 days and its gone so quickly, its so relaxing here and very beautiful..we could stay longer but we only have about 8 days left in s.e asia so we should move on!

We met a Scottish guy from Liz's diving group, Ross, that we've been hanging out with for the past few days. He's really lovely and we have hired bikes for us all to explore the island a bit more. This is a picture from last night at a nearby restaurant, i love the cushions-they look uncomfortable but they're completely the opposite!

Hill Top restaurant...the view over one of the southern beaches, me and Liz had to get off the bikes as the hill was so steep and they werent powerful enough! not much fun walking up there!

We were here for Thai New Year, the whole of Thailand celebrates with anything from 1 day to a week of soaking anything and everything! It was great fun and not long before we bought our own water guns..even if they were tiny at least we had something to fight back with!!!

The same day we joined Liz on her diving course so we could do some snorkeling, we headed upto Mango bay and spent the afternoon sunbathing, reading and checking out the coral...a lovely day! The boat was a bit of a party boat and everyone was getting into the new year spirit :)

Mango Bay

Making the most of mark having his laptop with him..although can be a pain hunting for free wifi sometimes!

We had a giant boulder in our bathroom...it was very cool...although the windows were very see-through and showering involved regular checks to see if anybody was around!!

Ko Pha Nang beach

Another pic from KPN, eating the delicious food at our hostel!

In the south

Hi everyone, just a quick post to say that we are all fine and that nothing unusual is happening down here in the south. We are far from Bangkok, Liz and I wont be going back at all as we are flying from Phuket to Singapore on the 24th to save some travelling time. Mark is heading back up but not until the end of the month, so hopefully it will have blown over by then. Liz is still doing her diving course, she finishes today, Mark and I are thinking of going off to explore some of the island but we're in relax mode, it's very chilled out here!! Tomorrow is our last day on Ko Tao and we're not too sure exactly where we'll be heading, Liz wants to go to khao sok national park but we arent so keen so we shall see, if we dont go we will probably head down to Krabi. anyway, hope to speak to you all soon, lots of love xxx

Also, congratulations to Vito and Christina on their engagement :)

Ko Phangan

Other than the Full Moon Party Ko Phangan was a lovely island, we hired motorbikes to explore a bit more and enjoyed the freedom to go wherever we wanted. Some of the roads were pretty rough but the roads were mostly quiet so a good place to practice. We stayed in a beautiful lodge, near to Ban Thai, which was very seculded and definately very close to nature. We had a rat in our bed the first night...which made me wake up VERY quickly and the last night i had a coke, took one drink through my straw and suddenly realised something was very wrong...there wasnt supposed to be anything big and lumpy in a can of coke!! I spat it our straight away and to my horror a giant bug crawled away!!!!! took me a good half hour to recover from how gross this was. Otherwise the place was lovely and the lady did the most amazing green curries that i had it twice in one day :)

Beach on the north of the island

Our hut

One of the great lively dogs...so so cute

Mark introduced these sweets to us..so good! check out the fashionable poncho :)

Full Moon Party

The Full Moon Party, Ko Pangan
Mark and I werent exactly rushing to go..especially after it was tipping it down with rain all day, but we made it there. It was interesting to see but not really our kind of thing, none of us were feeling brilliant and werent really in the mood..oh well!

This line of fire was ran over by so many people right after this photo...maybe after A LOT more to drink!!!

Liz getting into the mood with uv body paint

Engaged!!!!!!

This morning Mark proposed to me!! :) :) I'd like to say that i kept him guessing but im not very good at that sort of thing and said yes immediately!! hehe
I want to tell Mum before she reads this so if i cant get through then please dont tell her first! We are going on a overnight bus and then a ferry to Koh Phangan and i cant wait until i get there to tell eveybody! xxx

Comments

I think i have finally sorted out the settings for comments so let me know if you have any problems! Its always lovely to hear you are keeping up to date with us and our trip :) xxxx

Siem Reap

hello everyone! we are now back in Bangkok and have met up with Mark and Ricky. We had quite a long stressful 11hr journey here from Siem Reap, they made us wait around pointlessly for ages over and over again and then shoved us on a bus with useless air con for 4 hours..it was so so hot! First day here and we got soaked through to the bone by a storm, as much as i prefer the temperature like this i really hope it doesnt follow us to the islands.

Here are some pictures from our time in Siem Reap, there are so many i just couldnt be selective! sorry if you dont like pictures of ruins..haha.

When asked what the strangest thing we'd eaten was we were ashamed to admit the unidentified meats on the market was as far as we'd gone..so we decided to try the Cambodian BBQ. We had a mixture of meats, the usual chicken and beef but also some crocodile, snake and squid! We both managed to eat everything, the crocodile was lovely - i'd definately eat it again..the snake was ok but i wasnt that keen! We had to cook it all ourselves too...The chicken on our bbq with all the veggies in the "moat"...i really want one of these! :)The squid tentacles that i couldnt bring myself to eat but Liz managed fine!

We bought some local fruit to try (i forgot to photograph the other ones we've tried along the way). We found out that this is the fruit from a lotus, we had to break it to get the fruit out and then pop them out of their skins. Kind of tasted like bland fresh peas, not amazing but pretty inoffensive.

"Bayon" at Angkor Wat

The Elephant Terrace

Me and some random ruins

An interesting temple that had been restored, very weird to see the old worn stones next to the new bright and sharp ones..very much a contradiction!

One of the many temples we didnt quite make it to the top of...too hot for too much climbing!

My favourite..Ta Phrom, I absolutely loved this temple and was so excited to go. The beautiful trees growing up through the buildings, even on top of them, were such a reminder of the fight between nature and man.

The huge stones look like they were pushed aside with so little effort!

Me and a monkey outside Angkor..admittedly i could've got closer but he looked a bit cheeky and i've heard stories that some are trained to pickpocket!!

Carvings inside Angkor

Angkor Vat at sunrise. We had to get up at 4am..ugh..
I'm not sure if this is right but i think Angkor Wat is the name for the whole area and Angkor Vat for this main temple. Please correct me if i'm wrong!

Sunset at Bakeng..was actually really far from Angkor Vat and very busy but a nice atmosphere.

In the distance...my camera doesnt really do zoom very well!

The Cambodian tuk tuks