Monday, December 25, 2006

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!



Hey folks, it's Charlie!

Just a very quick note since the dinner, drinks and dancing that followed the taking of these pictures last night has left us both feeling a little bit wobbly today and typing is making me dizzy! So we just want to wish you all a very warm and merry Christmas time and a happy happy New Year. We are thinking of you all and will certainly raise our glasses to you all this evening...if we are able, but I promise we will try! Chin chin!! Lots of love, Charlie and Sean xx



This is us being "crazy" We're great craic, So we are..........

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Merry Christmas from Cambodia!



Christmas eve is the big night over here, so we are heading for a nice meal and then gonna get plastered on the beach. Its pretty surreal seeing Christmas decorations up when its 33 degree's outside, but there is deffinetly a buzz around the place which is great!

We are thinking of everyone and miss the lot of you, We are gonna have to get a few of you over for Christmas next year down under.

Lots of love
Sean and Charlie.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Happy Christmas (Well Nearly!!)
So, We have finally left Thailand and are now in Cambodia. We have just spent the last 4 days in Phnom Pehn (The Capital city - POP 2 million) and only today we got the bus down to Cambodia's only beach area, Which is called Sihanouk Ville, Which is where we will be spending the next 10 days or so trying to remind ourselves its actually Christmas.
wait, wait wait... I'm actually getting ahead of myself here, I have not even told you all about Bangkok, we spent a total of 6 days there and boy was it a shock to our system, We got a boat from Ko Tao to a place called Chumpon (crapy town) on the mainland where we caught an over night train to Bangkok:

When we arrived at the train station in Chumpon, we asked what platform the train is going to be on, the woman just pointed over to a single carriage waiting on the tracks, we hopped on board and waited for the rest of our train, which slammed into us pretty hard as it came into the station about 20 minutes later, it was a pretty boring journey and we arrived into Bangkok feeling pretty rough and just wanting to sleep!!

That's the inside of the train, do you think they could have fitted any more very hard metal things at my head height? Just look at them!! I must have taken my head off about 10 times during the night going to the toilet, Actually while I'm at it, the bloody toilet was about the size of a shoe box, I kept picturing myself getting trapped and having to yelp to be cut out of a smelly metal box with my pants around my ankles. I can just imagine charlies face now.....

Well, we arrived into Bangkok very early (5.30am) and got a taxi to the hostel, It was quite nice seeing the city at that time of the morning as it seemed nice and quite.
The hostel was a fair bit outside of town, but it was an amazing hostel and it was very nice to come back to after a hard days shopping in the city, Here is a few shots of the hostel:

It was brand new and was pretty much an apartment block, so we had our own entrance and or course the amazing pool on the roof

Ive always seen "infinity pools" on cribs and they always looked really cool, but when they look over a massive city and your 6 stories up, they are even better!!

One day we would head into town and shop/look around all day and the next day we would just chill by the pool and relax, It was a great plan!!

At night the view was deadly, the glow from the city was something else!


It was pretty hot in Bangkok and the pollution was crazy. You could just see grey when looking over the city, although sometimes the clouds made it look really cool.

Getting into town was pretty annoying as it was made up of a free taxi transfer from the hostel to the nearest Metro station, then 2 stops down the line, you change over to the sky train (monorail). It was worth it as the hostel was nice, but it really made the days longer. It was really the taxi part that was annoying as we were only going 5-6 miles, but it could take 40 minutes, the metro and sky train were deadly, clean, very fast and cheap!


Coming up from the metro!


Waiting for the sky train, this is actually a fair bit outside of the city centre and its still very built up, Its a huge city!!


This is inside the skytain station, Its only been around for about 2 years, I cant imagine the traffic problems before it!!


That's a skytrain track, its not exactly small. they kinda take over any street they go down and take away alot of the natural light from the street below. There are loads of walkways underneath the actual track which get you up above the fumes from the traffic below, which can be pretty bad!!


They certainly dominate the skyline.


That's taken from the walkways, It can look pretty cool looking down on the traffic.

Bangkok was amazing, I wasn't really looking forward to it, but I was blown away, by its size,by the shops, by the people, everything. We will be coming back through Bangkok in march and I cant wait, we went shopping crazy, bought loads of t-shirts/shorts and stuff for australia, we stuck them in storage in a place downtown which is really handy as we now have smaller bags and it makes it a bit easier to get around.
The day we left Ko Tao, my laptop decided to mess up and wouldn't boot into windows (This may get a bit nerdy, Sorry), I wasn't too worried as I had my photos backed up, and I had a windows CD to reinstall it back onto the laptop, but the cd was badly scratched and it wouldn't work. Starting to panic a little and beginning to think I may have to carry around a useless piece of expensive plastic for a while, that when I got to Bangkok I headed into the city to see If I could find a place that could sort it out for me. I was walking around a big shopping centre when I spotted a shop selling software, But instead of windows costing 300 euros, the shop was selling pirate copies of any type of software for 2 euros!!!!! Sweet, they even had the newest version of windows (out next march everywhere else in the world!!) After spending 10 euros I walked away with roughly 2800 euros worth of dodgy software and a big grin on my face!! I like Bangkok.


It was the first time that we knew it was Christmas, Loads of decorations everywhere which was kinda cool:


Its pretty funky, but It really added to wondering around.


Some of the shopping centres are really cheap, mainly because everything is a fake, really really good fakes, but still fakes, most of the real stuff is made here too so the fakes are spot on. Before I left Ireland I was shopping in Dublin and seen a t-shirt by an American brand for 90 euros (Yup, a 90 euro t-shirt) I laughed at the price then, but when I seen an Identical copy for 4 euros in a shop here, I could not resist, It had all the labels, it even had the tags on it!!


Other shopping centres are the real deal and the prices are the same as back home except for the tax is 7% as apposed to 21% back home. There is every shop you could imagine from Louis Vuiton and Chanel to Nike and Adidas, they even have Ferrari and Lamborghini shops! (they have car showrooms inside shopping centres!!)



Ferrari F430


911 Turbo (997)




Spyker

Here a few shots taken a night time in the city centre.










One thing we did do a few times was go to the cinema! We even went to see an IMAX movie in 3D:



Here is Charlie modelling some very snazzy 3D Glasses! The IMAX movie was savage, everything should be in IMAX, Books should be in IMAX............

Well thats all about our time in Bangkok, All there was to do was to fly to Phnom Pehn, we left from the brand new Bangkok airport:

Its bloody massive and very impressive, thats just one of the entrances to the gates!!


Well I hope your all keeping well and looking forward to Xmas, Have a couple of beers for us, we certainly will be thinking of you lot while we are lying on the beach drinking ours!!

Lots of Love
Sean and Charlie.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Hello everyone, Hope your all keeping warm and well, I hear the weather is not the best over there? Well you wont believe it but we had a bit of bad weather over here too....... We caught the tail end of a typhoon that hit Vietnam pretty bad, by the time it hit here in Ko Tao it was just a tropical storm which basically meant it rained for the whole day, Which is very rare over here as even during monsoon season the rain only lasts 1-2 hours max during the day. It just so happened to be the last day of my advanced course that the rain hit which wasn't great, but once your under the water it makes no difference! A few people doing the course decided not to go out because of the rain and cold (Cold over here means anything under 27 Degrees!!!!) It didn't make much sense to me, because what the hell else are you gonna do on a tiny tropical island when its raining?
Anyway we went and had a savage couple of dives and I am now a fully qualified advanced open water diver!! Which basically means I can go down to 30 meters (100FT) and do night-dives and navigate around dives sites on my own, I'm really glad I did it because It really build up my confidence underwater and instead of worrying about the basics I now can just really enjoy it down there!
Right enough of diving, Ill show you a few things about Ko Tao, Firstly where we were staying, "Bans"

Its the biggest dive resort on the island, which has its good points and bad points, the good points being the price and the equipment/boats/staff were all top notch, the bad points were its very busy and you are just another person being taught, so from talking to a few people who did the course with other instructors, they felt like they were being herded through the course like cattle and not given much attention. I personally loved our instructor and thought it was great, so you never know?

Here's a few shots of the resort:

This is where are apartment was, when we arrived the accommodation was included in the price, but it was pretty nasty, so we decided to ask what discounts you get off the nicer rooms, when doing a course it was less than half price and its was really nice and you got a TV and a fridge, which isn't really needed, but was pretty sweet and it was really nice to come back to after spending a day diving!!

Or in Charlies case, a day shopping and searching for chocolate pancakes!!!! Only messing, Charlie took over the roll of the organiser while I was diving and sorted out loads for us as I was pretty wiped out at the end of the day.


The whole resort is pretty pimped out and there is cool gardens around the place which are kept very well and also contain the loudest frogs I have ever heard, they can be really quite for ages an then all of a sudden they all start joining it with each other and get really loud and then they just shut up again? Weird!


This is the pool, Its pretty big and quite deep as its used for learning to dive which, when your not diving can be pretty annoying as you pop over to the pool to go for a swim, its fully of bloody divers.... typical!!!

This is the actual diving center, this is where you get changed and clean off your gear and plan your dives and wait for the speed boat to bring you to the big dive boat, pretty sweet, isn't it?



This is Sihh:


According to his sign, he sells "the best pancakes on Ko tao." Now, I'm not normally taken in by slick marketing, but that's a pretty big claim, So it would have been rude not to check out his pancakes, Big mistake!! they were amazing and not a single night went by when I didn't pop down to see my friend sihh!!! He would see me coming and start shouting "My friend" "My friend Sean" Its a bad sign when the local pancake guy knows your first name!! Great bloody pancakes though!!

In between days diving, We rented a moped and had a good look around the island, Its pretty small and there are only 2 main roads (what we would call roads anyway!!) We found this cool place up on a hill overlooking a place called shark bay!


Shark bay!
If you look closely, Here, Ill make it easier for you:

You can see the houses doted around the coast, they are pretty much just put up on rocks and there is no proper road to get to these houses, its all by boats!! pretty crazy!!




We popped down to the beach on Shark bay and it was pretty nice, this little shop, right on the beach, rented fins, so I went for a snorkel around the bay, didn't see any sharks, but it was cool anyway!


As I said, it rained pretty heavily for a whole day, this is what the roads look like before a full days rain:

No rain.

And this is what the look like after......

Drainage is not something people here have heard of, but they get by and after a day or two the roads start to look like this:

Which makes for interesting journeys on the bike, they normally fill in the roads with more sand and maybe some coconuts and sticks, kinda like the Galway County Council........



Its not all bad though, along the beach there are paths which are ment just for walking, but of course the locals and tourist use them as there own moped race track, but of course Id never do that........

Onto the main towns, there are two main tourist towns on Ko Tao, Mae Haad and Sariee Beach, we stayed about half way between them, which was kinda nice as they can be pretty loud and its nice to be able to get away from the noise!!


Thats Sariee beach's main street, apart from loads of bars and internet cafes, there was some really nice shops and we managed to spend loads on t-shirts!

That's the main street in Mae haad which is also the port town on the island, when I say port town, I actually mean its two small streets with a few small piers at one end!!
Here is the main ferry pier:

Gives you an idea of how things work over here!!



This is what charlie had to stare at while we were having the nicest curry ever. Dont even start on the mangle (Man bangle) it was my birthday present...... I was hoping for a PS3, but its the thought that counts........ grrrr....

Nice little tree cafe to enjoy an ice coffee in! The following photos dont need explaining, they are just to annoy you all!!!!






Well that was our time on Ko Tao, We are actually in Bangkok at the moment, and we are flying out to Cambodia on the 15th, Bangkok is bloody crazy, but we are loving it, a real wake up after the island life, but ill update soon with photos from here in bangkok, OK ill give you one photo from bangkok:



This is us chilling out on the roof of our hostel.... What kinda hostel has an Infinity pool on its roof? The kind Sean and Charlie stay at........

See ya!!