Storms, Sharks and Sunburns...

Well, we are still on Koh Tao here in Thailand. We are enjoying relaxing, eating and snorkeling, Our bungalow has been great, the weather however, well that is another story.

As i am writing this to you now, Steff is reading using a head lamp and i am sitting illuminated by the laptop screen, the only other signs of light are intense flashes of lightning outside the window. We did have a bit of a wind storm, which is now being followed by a thunder storm with some spectacular lightning and unpredictable fits of rain. Anyhow, the wind storm uprooted a full sized palm tree a couple of hundred feet from our bungalow and dropped it down on the power lines leading to us. So the power is going to be out for a while. Mind you, the nice folks at the front desk supplied us with a lantern, which on the way up to the bungalow leaked fuel all over me, interesting. I am scared to light it, certain it will burst into flames shattering its delicate glass all over the deck and turning the bungalow into a burning inferno of holiday nightmares.

Since i am on a bit of a 'negative-nellie' rant at the moment i should tell you about my snorkeling experience yesterday. Steff decided to stay at the bungalow and do some work on putting together our new portfolio for the wedding biz, i decided to go out for a snorkel. I walked down to the water and then hopped in for a great little snorkel session where i saw lots of different types of coral and fish, the visibility was ok but not great, due to another severe storm we had yesterday. When i returned to the rocks i set off from i found that someone had stolen my flip-flops and t-shirt! What is the world coming too when people are stealing your 2 year old flip-flops?

We did have a great day today though. We went and cruised around the island a bit on the off road motorcycle that we've rented, that was great on some of the steep, rutted, and occasionally washed out dirt roads. We spent a couple of hours this afternoon snorkeling in Shark Bay, which very happily lived up to its name, we swam with a shark! Ok, he was a small guy, maybe only a little more than 2 feet long, but he was very cool. He was pretty interested in us too, he swam about 5-6 feet from Steff and then circled around us a few times. He was the highlight to a truly spectacular snorkel. We have been left with more than just a great memory of the day though, Steff has a spectacular sunburn on her entire back side, from head to toe, despite lathering on copious amounts of sunscreen! You may be somewhat familiar with the notorious fake products coming out of Asia, well we are now fairly certain that our Banana Boat 30spf sunscreen is not actually real, the packaging is however, very convincing.

Tonight was supposed to be a good night out with some friends we met; a good meal up on Sairee beach followed by drinks and hopefully dancing at a bar that has a DJ spinning house music, but it's all become a wash out. Not to worry, we can hang out here, in the bungalow with no power, maybe for a bit of entertainment we can light up the lantern and see what happens, perhaps the fire dancers (usually out on the beach when its dry) staying somewhere across the bay from us can watch in envy at our very own pyrotechnic display.

Thats all for now, lots of love to our family and friends. And don't worry, we've been told that the monsoons don't hit this side of Thailand(!)

Koh Tao, Thailand

Ahhhh, Paradise!!! We have finally arrived at the beach with our cute beach bungalow on a quiet little bay at the south end of the island of Koh Tao. The picture above is the view from our bungalow which is raised up over the beach. It really is lovely, pretty much perfect, well almost...

What you can't see in the photograph is the ANTS! Argh! We spent about 4 hours this morning clearing out thousands of little red ants (with black bums) that were swarming through our backpacks and clothes. We finally got rid of most of them and then talked to the guy at the front desk who came in to our bungalow and nuked them with some seriously toxic spray. Anyhow, that was about 10 hours ago and we are happy to report that all is well, no ants, in fact no bugs at all. Hmmmm.

So, we are just getting our selves settled in here and slowing down to an island pace. We have been looking around for some snorkeling gear to go out and explore some of the many reefs around the island. The island is surrounded by dozens of dive spots. We read a fact that states 40 percent of the worlds divers now get certified on Koh Tao, hard to believe seeing the size of this 21 square Km paradise. Starting on tuesday we will go out and do some proper diving, beginning with a dive spot called the South West Pinnacles. The dive begins with a decent to 35 meters and then you slowly climb up while you swim around the pinnacle of your choice. The peaks of the pinnacles sit just 5 meters below the water. It sounds like there are plenty of great things to see in the water, we are keeping our fingers crossed to see one of the whale sharks (that thankfully prefer plankton to people), and they can grow up to 12 meters long! Steff is a little less excited about seeing one than i am, she is a bit more interested in the clown fish (the 'Finding Nemo' type fish). Hee hee!!

Well that is our quick update, we will post some photos of the island once we get a few together. In the meantime we will be kicking back, taking it easy and enjoying life on the beach...

...Lots of love to all our family and friends and we hope that you are all ding well. Justin and Steff oOo

Happy Birthday Justin!

Yesterday was Justin’s 34th Birthday! Yeah!!! We celebrated in a fairly mellow manner, which suited us just nicely. We treated ourselves to a day of treats from the ‘Western world;’ Ice cream at Dairy Queen, a movie with popcorn at a deluxe Bangkok cinema followed by a great sushi meal, yum! And then he finished off the night with a lovely Cuban cigar and a touch of whisky. All of this might have been pretty run of the mill if we were back in the UK or Canada, but after almost 4 months of travelling, this was great stuff. The ‘tuk-tuk’ ride back to our hotel was pretty insane. For those of you who aren’t familiar with a tuk-tuk, they' are 3 wheeled vehicles with seats and a small 'go cart' like engine. We refered to them in India as ‘autorickshaws’. Anyway, here they are pimped out with bright lights, pink leather and painted multi-colours and are much much faster than those in India. Our driver drove fast and furiously, dodging through traffic and even doing wheelies!! We held on tight and enjoyed the ‘tuk-tuk’ ride of our lives, while others pointed and laughed at us and our crazy driver. It was fab.

new photos have been posted in 'Thailand' link above

cheers!

Bangkok, Thailand

When we arrived into Bangkok we were hit with not only the heat, but the humidity at this was at about 8pm! The humidity was unreal and i thought, 'How are we going to survive Thailand if it's like this?' Turns out there was a fairly aggressive thunderstorm that hit the city about 3 hours later, which explained the humidity and the next day was more bearable. Thank goodness. We are staying just north-west of Khao San Road, which is Asia's noisiest, biggest and liveliest backpackers area. Lots of shops, food stalls, nightclubs, restaurants and people who even sell fake diplomas and student cards. Our hotel is on a leafy, tree lined road right next to a large Buddhist temple, which looks lovely and peaceful, although this doesn't stop our hotel from blasting music from its restaurant. The monks inside the temple do loudly hit a bell on their side which may be a counter reaction to the dance music from over here. Cultures colliding! We've had a restful day, chatting to other travelers and planning our next few months in S.E. Asia. We have to spend approximately a week here in Bangkok, as we have to get our Australian and Vietnamese visas sorted. Then we are planning to head south to some islands for some fun in the sun and the sea!!!! We are sooooooo looking forward to it!

Ping Yao, China

We thought that it would be a good idea to see something other than Beijing while we were on our short 2 week trip in China, so we broke out of Beijing and headed for a city just over 700km to the West, the city of Ping Yao. We booked ourselves on an over night train from the Beijing West Railway station.

The train system in China seemed to operate quite differently than it does in India. India's train stations seem like a swirling mass of disorganized people all hanging out on the platform, in the big cities things can be quite chaotic. Things in China were a lot more organized in some ways. One of the ridiculous things about Chinas rail system though is that you can only get a train ticket from the city you are in. This meant that we could get a ticket to Ping Yao, but not back, slightly worrisome since we were doing this journey right at the end of our trip to China, with only 3 days to spare. The train station itself is pretty different, when you arrive, you enter the station proper through a security system of guards and x-rays. Once inside you go to your designated waiting area away from the train platforms and then when you are within a few minutes of the train departure you go through a designated gate (much like you do when boarding an airplane) and finally onto the train platform. The tickets are checked before you can enter the platform and then again before you can get on your designated coach.

We booked what they call a hard sleeper (as opposed to a soft sleeper), which is a bit of a misleading term. They are still padded sleepers, but just not as plush as the soft sleeper, but also half the price. Each berth has six beds, we had the ones on top, close to the ceiling and the A/C vent. It is really fun though because you feel like a kid up there on top of a really tall bunk bed. The people we met on the trains were really nice, very friendly and we were certainly a bit of a novelty for the other Chinese travelers in our coach. Much like in India, we talk to a person who speaks English (in this case a 17 year old girl returning from 2 days of piano instruction in Beijing), she then relays the information to the other people in our berth and then the information starts to work its way through the coach. This is quite funny because when you walk to the toilets at the end of the coach you might exchange a smile with someone who then turns to the person next to them and explains what we had told the girl earlier, we could pick this up because we would here the chinese word for Canadian, then the person next to them would nod and look up at us and smile, or giggle, very cute. Anyhow, we had a great sleep on the train, i dreamt about earthquakes and bombs dropping which i realized after i woke up was likely due to the constant movement on the train working its way into my dreams and me trying to explain this in dreamland, kinda funny.

Most of our journey was at night but there was a decent chunk in daylight, the whole journey was about 13 hours. Outside Beijing did confirm some of our suspicions, that perhaps Beijing was not an accurate picture of China. The towns we passed through looked pretty run down, many with poorly constructed apartment blocks which looked 50 years old (but in actual fact were likely a lot newer). Towns usually had several factories and smoke stacks, pumping out black smoke and some had huge flames coming our of them (likely refineries). Most of the roads were not nearly as nice as what we had seen in Beijing, full of potholes and poorly maintained, but there were a couple of exceptions, which seemed out of place. In one small city that was very rough and run down looking, the ground mostly just dry dirt, there was a beautiful flower and tree lined boulevard running right through the middle, in complete contrast to what was around it, quite strange.

Ping Yao was very interesting. It is a walled city that is very old. The city walls were originally constructed between 800 and 600 BC. We stayed at a guest house that was over 250 years old. The buildings are mostly hundreds of years old (rather than thousands of years) and the city has not been restored. This is a significant point because the Chinese have a peculiar idea about restoration, the simply take away the old stuff and rebuild it in the same design using all new materials, so things don't actually look old at all, because they're not. In Ping Yao however, the city has not had any money to do any restoration, although that is likely to change since tourists are now traveling there. Before the year 2000 the city was virtually unheard of, but now it's popularity is growing and with good reason, it really is a fascinating, totally in tact old working city.

We spent a good deal of time just wandering around checking things out. We rented bicycles again which made moving around much more fun. On the end of our 2nd day we managed to pull together another photo shoot which went very well. We used a beautiful 21 year old girl from the city of Xian, she was a great actor/model and we were able to create some exciting images. After our flirting but great visit with Ping Yao we did manage to make it back to Beijing but it wasn't easy.

Back when we first arrived in Ping Yao we went to the train station to book our return train, this was important since we had a flight to catch. There were no tickets available. We couldn't believe it, this system of only being able to book tickets from the place you are in is so stupid. There were no tickets available on the one train per day to Beijing, there is no bus service and no flight service, we began to get very concerned. At the train station they did offer us tickets to get on the train but we would have to stand up for the 13 hour journey through the night, ahhhhh. We rode our bikes bake to the guest house and explained the situation to see what could be done. In the end we payed someone off to sort things out for us, the Chinese equivalent of Indian Baksheesh I suppose. Basically someone drove to a town 1/2 and hour down the line and bought us tickets from that station instead. Since that stop was before ours in Ping Yao we still just got on the train where we wanted. Can you believe this booking system? I mean there were tickets available on the train but they were allocated to the previous station, how annoying. But we did get on, had to pay for it mind-you, had a super sleep and woke up the next day back in Beijing.

During our last day in Beijing we took it pretty easy, spent time socializing around the hostel and then went out for a spell of clothes shopping at the market. Very early the next morning we caught another great Singapore Airlines flight to Singapore and then Up to Bangkok.

Beijing, China

We have been in China now for 5 days, mostly around the Beijing area. This place is pretty amazing and these Chinese have really got it together. But, before i go on to much about that I should just rewind things a little, back a few days.

So, following our hectic last day in Delhi, we headed to the airport and hopped on our Singapore airlines flight to Singapore. What a super airline, great food, great service and the outfits those beautiful Stewardesses wear are really fantastic. The Stewards uniforms make them look like duds (in their baby blue blazers), especially when seen next to the women's uniforms. From Singapore we flew to Beijing where we have been for the last five days now.

And Beijing? Amazing, not anything like we expected. Very modern, clean, modern urban architecture, super infrastructure, gorgeous park areas, nice new cars on the road, beautiful people who are very well dressed, overall surprisingly Western. We can even say, better overall than most Western world cities. We have been out and about checking out all the usual touristy spots; Tiananmen Square, the Forbiden City (boring!), the markets (exciting!), and of course the Great Wall, which we visited today with our friend Halima, who is living in Beijing with her husband Aleem.

So, the city markets are really super, you can get the most amazing deals on designer clothing, really silly cheap prices, and great quality. The price negotiating in the markets is really fun, especially with the girls that in work some of the shops. They constantly compliment you and touch you while haggling on the price, it is a very friendly and pleasant experience. We have never had any one try and rip us off is such a cute and friendly way as the Chinese girls. They are just so lovely as they try to extract as much cash possible from your pockets. And when it comes to getting a good price you really need to know what to pay or you could get into trouble with paying far too much. Luckily for us we went out with our friend Halima here for a night of shopper training where we were given the low down on the pricing and what to pay. Oh, and the markets, incase you are wondering, are really nice, not the grungy markets you might be thinking of, these are clean multi-story modern shopping centers with lots of small shops.

Right, so there is also the Donhuamen Night Market, a fairly famous Beijing Night food market which is not like anything we have seen before. What makes it so unique is the kinds of things they sell as food. Lots of bugs; cockroaches, centipedes, grasshoppers and so on. Then there are the sea creatures; starfish, sea urchins and sea horses. Then you've got your snakes and scorpions, plus all sorts of other things that crawl. All served grilled on s stick! The crazy thing is that people were really tuckin' into this stuff! We were hungry and did have some food, but played it very safe. We at some vegi stuff, Steff had some corn on the cob and tofu on a stick, i had some Banana battered balls with sugar, oh yes and we also ate some snake. The snake was actually very nice. It had the texture of a very tender piece of octopus and was fried with a chili sauce to give it some zing, good stuff. We were told by an American that the sea urchin was not that great so not to bother with that one, too bad since we really wanted to give that ball of slimy goop a go!! (yeah right!).

Today we had a really neat little trip to an unrestored part of the Great Wall of China. We drove for about 2 1/2 hours and ended up deep in the green hills outside Beijing. We began a hike with no sight of the wall. We climbed and climbed up into the hills and finally ended up on the 2000 year old wall where we began to walk along a few kilometers of its length. Sections of it are remarkably steep, and being an unrestored, non-touristy section, it was a challenge to navigate the crumbing walls and steps. Most people go to the restored sections, but we wanted to see the authentic Great Wall. The Chinese have a knack of over restoring (basically re-build new, no actual restoration!), hence why we sought out an authentic section. The whole area was really pretty with green odd shaped hills and at the end we descended into a small village where we ate a lovely fresh lunch prepared at a home.

So all in all we are both really impressed with what is going on in China, even the environmental stuff. Environmental issues are right at the forefront here and speed at which the government is taking action ( no doubt due in part to international pressure) is impressive. The issues are right at the forefront of awareness and plans are either in effect or taking effect to deal with the problems as swiftly and effectively as possible. We are aware however that all the information we have on this environmental stuff is coming out of the governments propaganda machine, so a grain of salt may be required here.

Well thats about it really. All pretty good except for one minor hiccup. We did fall prey to what we later found out is a well known scam here in Beijing, the tea shop scam. We were befriended by a lovely girl who hung out with us for over an hour or so and then we all ended up in a tea shop trying teas. Of course, silly us didn't ask if we were going to be charged for this tea tasting, they were free samples righ (Western thinking here-free samples are given, but you are expected to buy)? Well no, they are not free samples (as they are in all tea shops that are legit) these were very pricey, but you don't get told that until the end, oh well live and learn. The girl that led us into the tea shop is likely on some sort of commission from the shop to bring people in and rip them off. You know it all goes right back to what i said about the girls in the market. These people have the amazing ability to look you straight in the eyes and be incredibly cute and charming and then basically rob you blind, all the time smiling and actually making you feel good. The Chinese are very good at matters involving taking your money, it's no wonder that in our consumer driven world they are poised as the next world leaders.

Last few days in Delhi

So, we left McLeod Gange up in the Himalyas and headed down to Delhi on our overnight train, sadly our last train journey in India. We arrived in Delhi very early in the morning, things in the Paharganj area of Delhi hadn't quite got started yet. The streets smelled of the rotting garbage that was strewn about, the odd cow strolled around searching for breakfast in the rubbish while we started looking for a hotel to check into and freshen up our sticky, dusty bodies that had been traveling for almost 20 hours. We found a nice little gem of a hotel complete with 'desert cooler' (for those of you who don't know what it is, it is basically a fan in a box that has walls of straw. Water circulates around the box and keeps the straw wet. As the fan draws the air through the wet straw the air is cooled a few degrees. These are much more economical than an air conditioner and seem to work very well.), this made the 42 degree temperatures a little more bearable.

Our five days in Delhi went by quickly. We sorted out our visas for China and spent a lot of time in the nicer parts of the city. Delhi is actually a very nice city, but since most travelers stick around the Paharganj area they probably think that is what Delhi is all about. The reality is that the Paharganj area is near the main train station and is in an older part of Delhi and grungy and dirty compared to the rest of New Delhi. The draw is that it is a very interesting area due to the narrow, bustling streets full of characters selling there good, plus lots of travellers so it has the best deals on places to stay.

Also in Delhi we miraculously managed to pull off a photo-shoot. Attempting to organize this in Delhi was painful and difficult and it really didn't seem like it was going to happen. I had an idea for a shot that i wanted to create which i needed a model for, plus i wanted to create a series of photos for stock library use. Anyhow, after running into road block after road block and literally going all over the city trying to get things happening, it did all come together and the shoot happened (after two days of delays) on the morning we flew out of Delhi, pretty hectic. But it is done, it worked out exactly as i wanted in the end and the shots are in the bag. The model was great and handled the spectators very well. Indians love to hang about and stare at whatever it is you are doing, they seem very fascinated in the littlest things about us white folk, so you can only image their interest during the photo-shoot. There were several times when we had to move spectators out of the background of the shot. Overall it was a great experience.