Andrew Pell: February 2010

Phuket & Phi Phi Island

After two and a half weeks of action packed travelling it was time for a bit of relaxation on the beach! After a night stopover in Phuket we caught 1.5 hour ferry (with a cat who calls the ferry home) to Phi Phi island. No words can explain how beautiful this place is. Soft white sand, crystal clear warm water and billions of fish! Oh and the super hot sun that kicks in around breakfast time, perfect for an early dip. We stayed at an extremely nice resort called Paradise Pearl which was located on Hat Yao (long beach) the best swimming beach on the island. Our room was exactly 70 sluggish steps to the beach and the balcony provided a lovely view of the beach and distant islands. 7 nights here allowed us to really relax and get a cracker tan! I also managed to get a bug/food poisoning on thee very first night! Ahhhhhhhhhhh! Think it might have been the wierd pad Thai noodles at lunch which appeared to have tomatoe sauce on it!! After a couple more disappointing meals at paradise pearl we ventured 100 metres up the beach to another swanky restaurant. Hooray we found decent food on long beach! Choosing which fish you wanted slapped on the BBQ was rather quite fun. We even lashed out one night and had a lobster/crayfish cooked for us! Not as good as yours dad but pretty damn close! The massive prawns were another highlight. Apart from swimming, sunning and relaxing we did manage to fit in a snorkelling and sight seeing trip around the islands. Fish fish fish fish fish everywhere! Check out the photos below. We dropped into 'The Beach' on Phi Phi Leh, got slightly freaked out by the monkeys on monkey beach, snorkelled around bamboo island and shark point and watched the sun go down on the way home! Brilliant! After such an exhausting stay on the island :) we had to treat ourselves to a coconut oil massage by the beach. So good! One final buffet breakfast and then it was time to say goodbye to the lizard who decided our room was home for the week and jump on the ferry back to Phuket. Thankyou Phi Phi island!

Not what we expected to find in the seat in front of us!

Mara then made new friends very quickly!

The Beach at Phi Phi Leh

Snorkelling Trip & Cruise - Life is tough sometimes...

One of the many snorkelling spots - the water is ridiculously clear.

Action shot!

Soooooooo many fishes!

Getting a close up of the tourists

Wow!

This fish was so bright

Dinner???

Another tough day on the beach..

The view from Hat Yao - Long Beach

This cat has the life!! Sleeps on Phi Phi all day and then has plenty of seafood for dinner!

Sometimes it was just too hot to go in the sun!

Sunset on Koh Phi Phi

The Paradise Pearl Longtail boat

These were our 2 seats for the week. Not bad hey!

More sunsets!

The cruise home onboard the boat.

Pai

After 5 great days in Chiang Mai we again headed north to a small hippy town called Pai (pronounced 'bye', not 'pie'). A 4 hour bus trip through some beautiful and hilly countryside saw us arrive in Pai. We checked into a very comfortable bungalow just off the main drag and it seemed this funky villiage town was very quiet. However, come night time food stalls were everywhere and of course street stalls selling some really cool stuff unlike the shitty stalls in Bangkok. Street performers also did their thing and people released those paper candle lantern thingamajiggas into the night sky. We also found a lady cooking up fresh pad Thai on the street for 25 baht (not even $1!) Along with a Singha beer this was a quality dinner.

After seeing 5 year olds fly around on scooters in Chiang Mai we thought it was time to try our luck! We hired a scooter (Rose juniour) for a 24 hour period which cost us 100 baht ($4). Don't worry mum we lashed out and got 80 baht ($3) insurance just incase! Oh and we quickly discovered that going faster was much more stable and safer! :) The only worrying thing was seeing a few tourists with bandaged limbs... The scooter was a blast and very handy as it allowed us to visit a few tourist attractions 5-10kms out of town. These included visiting a temple on sundown, a waterfall and the pai canyon. Pai is also known for its very cold and fresh mornings which was a nice change from muggy Bangkok. With a few hours left on our scooter rental we woke up early to see the sun rise and to visit the natural hot springs for a cleansing dip! The springs are 80 degrees at the top where the locals like to boil their eggs (even though there us a big sign saying don't boil eggs in the springs!) We found a nice flowing pool midway down the springs which was perfect to watch the steam rise up and listen to the birds go about their morning duties. And best of all we had the entire place to ourselves except for one Thai man who told us he comes every morning for a swim and to exercise, who could blame him! After our dip we returned our scooter, no skin or paint lost and jumped on a mini bus back to Chiang Mai. I do believe this is where the game of 'corners' originated as the road is ridiculously bendy. Add this plus a crazy driver and you get a very interesting trip. It would normally take a sane driver 5 hours to do this trip but our driver clearly aimed for the 2.5 hour mark! Not to mention that he had a cold and sniffed/snorted 8,587 times on our way back to Chiang Mai! Ahhhhhhhhhhh! We checked back into the brilliant Sri Pat guesthouse for one more night before heading south to Phuket. The staff at Sri Pat were wonderful and the 3 girls running the show (noi, nan & soi) made sure our stay was enjoyable and that we became fluent with our thai phrases.

Main street of Pai

The view from the back of our guesthouse!

Freaks in their helmets

A very small waterfall, wet season is a bit better i think!

The little beast that took us around Pai

One minor hi speed hiccup!! This little thing bloody hurt!

Sunset over Pai

Beer & then pad thai! Yum!

Pai night market

Crazy street performers

A typical Thai sunset

Lanterns let into the Pai Sky

Chiang Mai - Thai Farm Cooking School

We enrolled ourselves in a thai cooking class to ensure we could continue eating such tasty food back in the land of Oz. The course took place on an organic farm about 20kms out of Chiang Mai. It was extremely well run and we had a very interactive group which made things all the more fun. Our instructor for the day was a guy called Tommy, who was very informative and had a great sense of humour. First on the menu was making our own curry paste, yep that's right no more cheating by buying a jar of it! With our curry paste ready to go we then whipped up a simple yet very tasty red chicken curry. Depending on your tastebuds you could choose to add more or less chillies, mine turned out to be of the eye watering variety! Next it was Tom yam soup (a veggie soup with shrimp) which was quite effective in cooling down the curry burn. With two dishes ready to eat, we made one more each. Mara made a great papaya salad and I stayed simple with basil chicken! Then finally it was time to demolish what we had prepared. Lunchtime took an hour and no one got through all their food! After lunch everyone was a little on the sleepy side but we still had 2 dishes to finish up with. My favourite wad next, mango and sticky rice which went down a treat! Finally we had to cook up some pad Thai which ended up being our dinner later on that night. After a sleepy mini bus ride back to Sri Pat guest house we headed out in search of some Thai massage to ease our acheing feet. An extremely entertaining hour followed as we were ushered into a reclining chair on the side of the street. Our therapists were full of laughs and continued to heckle forangs (tourists) as they walked past! A solid hour on both lower legs and feet cost us a whopping 120 baht ($4 aus). Yep that's right, 4 bucks!! And it was given the thumbs up by both of use. We then floated home for a good nights sleep!

Millions of different rices at the market

Ready to go!

The start of the curry paste..

Don't burn it!

A massive amount of food for lunch, some which ended up being dinner!

A fun day!

Chiang Mai - Elephant Nature Park

After being picked up from our accomodation we had a 1.5 hour mini bus ride to the Elephant Nature Park. This park rescues elephants that are sick or have been mistreated by their owners, a much too common occurence. There were 33 elephants including a very cheeky 6 month old youngster roaming the 267 acres. Each elephant has a mahout, a trained carer that wanders with them all day. However there is one elephant called Hope that requires 2 mahouts to keep him out of trouble! He also is the only elephant that is required to wear a bell so everyone knows exactly where the boistrous beast us. We were even lucky enough to get a wet vacuum kiss, mine a rough one on the ear and Mara's a nice juicy one on the cheek. Apparently Hope is a ladies man and always saves his nice kisses for the female variety!

Volunteers pay to stay for a week or longer to help out with the numerous chores of caring for so many huge animals. We were lucky enough to help out with the feeding and bathing of the elephants, an amazing experience that hasn't quite sunk in. Hin our very cheeky guide for the day was a constant source of entertainment. He informed us that elephant number two's are known as banana cakes! We had to dodge a few of these as they floated down the river!! We took some great photos and some video footage that hopefully I can upload onto the net when I get a chance.

Hin our tour guide pointing out the 'dimples' that show the elephant is quite old

Open wide. "Just put the whole bloody lot in!"

A big wet one!!!! Super vacuum strength!

Mud bath time! The little fella was a touch clumsy.

This big girl had previously suffered a broken back as a result of a poorly managed breeding program.

Bath time, we eventually got to splash the elephants in the freezing cold stream
That lady in shot was so weird!!

Time to layer on the sunscreen, a quick roll around in the dirt will do.

Showing the little ones how to do it

Historical Sukothai

We woke early to take a 1 hour bus ride from Phitsanulok to our next stop which was a town called Sukothai. On the bus, a Monk who was sitting up the back called us both over. We were a little hesitant but before long the Monk has 'blessed' us, tied a wrist band on and wished us a safe journey. This was a nice touch after not feeling super comfortable in Phitsanulok. Once arriving in Sukothai we checked into a small guesthouse that was extremely cheap & served delicious food.

Sukothai is known for its well preserved ruins and we set out to see them by first catching a 30minute sawngthaew (basically a truck with seats in the back) to the historical park. After hiring some dodgey bikes for $1 that were way to small for my lanky legs we rode around the park with stops at each of the 21 historical sites. One of the highlights was the 9m tall standing Buddha among broken columns. A sweaty few hours followed before it was time to return the bikes and head back into town for some well earned food. On the way back to town it was clear that school had just finished as there were kids running about the place everywhere. Sure enough our sawngthaew turned into a makeshift school bus and we had about 30 kids all piled into the back with us. This was definetly a fun ride back into town!

The most amazing desert was discovered by us in Sukothai. Well I am sure a lot of other people have discovered it too but my goodness this was tasty and extremely intersting to watch it being prepared. So.... its basically roti bread made from scratch, fried in a shitload of oil with banana and coconut then placed in the middle. If that wasn't already good enough, the sweet lady behind the stall slops sweet milk (condensed milk) all over the top of it! Lets just say that 1 was clearly not enough!!!!

After having our sugar hit and an enjoyable day and a bit in Sukothai it was time to head to Chiang Mai, a 6 hour bus journey.