We left Koh Phangan on 28th March and returned for a few days on Samui.

We stayed at the very nice Moonhut Bungalows in Mae Nam, on the north side of the island. Very clean bungalow with fan and 24hr electricity.

At about 00:30 the morning after we got there we were woken by our phones rining. It was Vic’s parents ringing to tell us that there had been another quake in the Indian Ocean and that there was a tsunami warning. As we were on the East coast of Thailand we decided not to worry (though we were very close to the beach), and as things turned out, there was nothing to worry about in Thailand.

On Friday 1st April we caught a flight from Samui to Krabi, where we are at the moment. We’re staying in the fab Chan Cha Lay Guesthouse in Krabi City, which must be one of the best decorated rooms we’ve had (and it’s quite reasonably priced!).

We kew our 30 day visa-free tourist stamp was due to expire soon,so we checked and found it was due to run out on Sunday 3rd, so asked at the guesthouse about doing a “visa-run”. They said we would need to get an A/C mini-van to Hat Yai (4 hours), and then get another van to Sadao (another hour), and go across the border in to Malaysia there. 250 Baht each one-way to Hat Yai, another 50 Baht each way to Sadao.

The bus left on Saturday morning at 6:30am and filled up as we picked up passengers around Krabi, before settling in for the long haul to Hat Yai.

We got to Hat Yai pretty much on schedule and then found the mini-vans going to Sadao (just round the corner from where we were dropped). A few minutes after we set off, the van ran into the back of a songthaew, smashing the headlights and quite a bit of the rest of the front of the van. Luckily no one was injured, and after a 20 minute wait another van turned up so that we could complete the rest of the trip to Sadao without incident.

Once dropped off in Sadao, we had to walk upto the Thai side of the border to get our exit stamps on our passports, and then walked a kilometre or so to the Malaysian side where immigration forms had to be completed and the passports stamped again.

Crossing the road we then went through the departure side of the Malaysian immigration, getting exit stamps. Back along the road to the Thai border with a brief stop off to look round the Duty Free shop in no-mans-land (not very interesting), fill in Thai immigration forms (from the Immigration Office on the left), another stamp on the passport (this time a Thai entry stamp) and back to the road where we were dropped off.

Quite straightforward, if a little bewildering in execution, all taking about 30 minutes. Bus back to Hat Yai for 3:30pm. The bus back from Hat Yai to Krabi wasn’t due to leave until 5pm so we went and got a drink and found an internet cafe (possibly the noisiest I’ve been in, full of 10 yr old Thai’s playing Counterstrike).

The journey back was uneventful, I kept busy with my recently purchased Gameboy Advance SP. Back to Krabi by 9:30pm making it a long day and we were fit to collapse.

On Sunday we saw some news reports on TV of bombs in Hat Yai where we had been the previous day. I’m not saying we’re jinxed or anything but over the past year we’ve had quite a few near misses with disasters etc.

Still, we’re safe and happy. Next couple of weeks will be spent around the Andaman coast of Thailand, probably Koh Lanta, and maybe Koh Phi Phi and Koh Jum. On the 18th April, we fly back to Bangkok, and then on to Siem Reap in Cambodia.

After a few days on Samui, we’re back on Koh Phangan, staying at the Coral bay bungalows in Chaloklum on the north of the island.

Nice bungalow, with a great view over the bay (see above) and wonderfully coloured sunsets.

We have a tokay living in our bathroom, using the floor in there as his toilet. He hasn’t caused too much disturbance so far, though we can hear other tokays calling during the night. He’s about a foot long and very brightly coloured.

Not sure what’s happening next, might be off to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat, or might not. Vic is trying to sort out travel details but it’s not easy.

After our brief stay at Ao Chao Phao, we travelled back to Thong Nai Pan and managed to get a couple of bungalows at the Thong Ta Pan resort we had stayed at earlier.

We spent a few more days relaxing and enjoying the food and surroundings, as well as making a short excursion to Thong Nai Pan Yai, to the south of Noi where we were staying.

All too soon it was time to return to Koh Samui to get Lisa back to the airport. We returned to Samui on Thursday 17th March, and stayed with her at The Jungle Club in the mountains above Chaweng. The huts there are basic (thatched wooden huts with mosquito nets) but were very comfortable and had good shower rooms.

The Jungle Club pool is excellent, built on the edge of the mountain to give it that trendy “infinity pool” look. The owners and staff are all very friendly and there are two free Jeep transfers up and down the hill (the only way to reach the Club) per day. The huts are only 450 Baht per night. (The Club can be contacted by phone on 01-8942327 or 01-8918263, +66 for Thailand)

We spent an evening in Chaweng, eating and drinking at The Deck (very good value, for Chaweng).

After seeing Lisa off on Friday we headed back to Chaweng and walked along the beach before going to “Three Monkeys for dinner.

I’ve uploaded some pictures from our time in Thailand so far.

We met up with Lisa on Sunday and caught a flight to Koh Samui that evening. It’s only an hour from Bangkok on the plane (14+ hours on the train/ferry).

We stayed for a couple of nights at Cactus Bungalows in Bophut, just along the beach from the hotel we stayed in in 2001. The bungalows were nice enough, though the beds were mattresses on a raised concrete platform, so could have been softer.

After a day recovering from travel and visiting the cafes of Bophut we caught the ferry from Bophut to Koh Phangan (there seem to be at least 4 ways of spelling it) at 9:30am on Tuesday.

Arriving there we got a pickup truck to our resort (Thong Ta Pan at Thong Nai Pan Noi) for a very expensive 600 baht. With hindsight we should have got a Song Thaew instead as they only charge 80 baht per person.

Nice resort, our bungalows were on a hillside about a hundred yards from the beach. Towels and toilet paper were provided which was a bonus. Nice clean beach in a bay with good swimming. We spent a bit of time lying on the beach and swimming.

We spent three nights there, eating at resort restaurants and on our last night we visited Que Pasa, a Mexican restaurant run by an English girl. The food was good and we were entertained by the local dogs playing and chasing motorbikes.

On Friday we moved on to Ao Chao Phao, via Thong Sala, to stay at the Seaflower bungalows. Looking back, it was probably a mistake, the rooms were more expensive and had fewer facilities (no towels or loo roll) and the beach was much narrower with a very shallow bay that made swimming impossible.

We enjoyed a few sunset drinks at the Pirate’s Bar, and then had a superb meal at The Village Green, a nearby restaurant/pub. Vic and I had a massaman curry (chicken and potato in a sweet peanut sauce), and Lisa had a giant BLT baguette. We’d definitely recommend a visit to the Village Green to anyone in the area. They do lots of British pub grub too, like steak and Guiness pie, chip butties etc.

We’ve been here in Negombo for just over a week.
We’re staying at the Silver Sands hotel, which is nice enough, though the staff are a little umm.. untrained. We’ve been eating quite a few meals in the excellent and friendly Ruwini restaurant, just across the road on Lewis Place.

Tomorrow, we fly to Bangkok, where we’re spending one night. We’re then meeting up with Lisa who is flying out from the UK to visit for a couple of weeks on Sunday. We’re all flying down to Koh Samui on Sunday evening, and after a couple of nights there, getting the ferry over to Koh Pang Ngan

We’ve enjoyed Sri Lanka, we’d like to come back when the tsunami recovery work has progressed further and visit some of the areas we’ve missed. We’ve spent far too much money, which is going to make things interesting, but hey, that’s why we’re doing this whole trip.

Early start tomorrow, flight is at 7:45am, and we’re under instruction to be at the airport 3 hours before, so 4:45am!

Managed to get them uploaded, so here’s the Taj Mahal pictures which were taken more than 2 weeks ago now.

I’ve also uploaded the Sri Lanka pictures to date. These cover all of the Cultural Triangle sites we visited, plus Kandy, and Ella.

Another update without photos, I’m afraid. Not managed to find somewhere that we can upload pictures yet, though I’ll try harder in the next couple of days. We still have the Taj Mahal pictures to upload, and have since filled the 512mb memory card again!

We arrived in Sri Lanka late on Monday 7th February. We had a hotel room booked so got a taxi from the airport to the Airlink hotel. After being shown to our room (which was basic but looked okay) we started to unpack but noticed a cockroach appear from under the door. A big cockroach, maybe 3-4 inches long. One wouldn’t be a problem, but then more and more started to emerge from the bathroom, from under the bed and a variety of other dark locations. We put some roach-killing chalk down but this only worked slowly. After half an hour, with 4-5 roaches in their death throes around us we went and asked for another room, which was available, but at additional cost (what a surprise!).

The next room was fine, and we slept until about 7 when we got up and headed for our next hotel, the lovely Colombo House in Colombo.

Great room there, more of a suite in fact. Lovely old house with a balcony etc.
We went for a walk to absorb a bit of Sri Lankan atmosphere. The first thing that struck us was how much cleaner and better built everything was. The roads were less unruly, people seemed happier than in India, and it was lovely and warm, much welcomed after our last week of cold and rain in Delhi.

After a day of shopping and eating, we booked ourselves a tour of the Cultural Triangle through Mr Linton of Rail Tours, just close to Fort Station in Colombo. We would have a car and driver for 5 days starting out from Kandy which we would reach by train.

The train journey was very pleasant, 3 hours in the 1st Class observation car on the train. 1st class isn’t as posh as it sounds, probably equivalent to a dirty Standard Class train in the UK. We travelled up through the hills to Kandy, passing some lovely views of forested and cultivated hillsides.

On reaching Kandy we stayed at Mr Linton’s Blue Haven guesthouse, up in the hills above Kandy with beautiful views over a valley.

I won’t go into great detail on all the places we visited, but over the next few days we went to Dambulla, Sigiriya, Polonnaruwa, Mihintale and Anuradhapura, all part of the UNESCO Cultural Triangle of Sri Lanka.

We saw some amazing buildings, ruins, stupas (dome-shaped Buddhist shrines) and sculpture, most of which we took pictures of. As I say, I’ll upload some of the pictures when I can as they surpass anything I can say about them. We met some great people too, particularly Mr Peter Larsson (from Sunderland; good luckwith the teaching job, Peter), Kumar our driver, and Nuwan who guided us so well at Mihintale

After the tour we returned to Kandy, and caught a train to a hill-station town called Nuwara Eliya, about 4 hours away. We spent a day there, with a quick look around the town before heading to Ella, a small village in the Highlands surrounded by spectacular views.

In Ella we walked down to Ravana Ella Falls, before catching a bus back to the guesthouse. Ella is a lovely place, marred only by the excessive competition between the guesthouse owners. We stayed at both the Ella Gap Tourist Inn, and the Ravana Heights guesthouse, and both were very good, although very different.

On Sunday 20th we caught the train back to Colombo, a marathon journey of 11 hours (again in the observation car) which delivered us back at 10pm.

So that’s what we’ve been up to. The photos will take some weeding through but I hope to get them sorted soon.

Our next step is on to Negombo on Wednesday, one of the few beach places which wasn’t badly affected by the Dec 26th tsunami. We haven’t spent any time on a beach since Arambol, so we figured we could so with a bit of relaxation.

My last blog entry was written in Bangalore so I’ve got a bit of catching up to do.

We got a flight with Air Deccan to Delhi, and spent a couple of days at the Hotel Ajanta having booked a bus ticket to Dharamsala through the travel agent there (after first checking that the bus would be “luxury” and we wouldn’t be given the back seats. “Bus is used mostly by foreigners, sir, is very good bus”).

On Thursday evening we went to get the bus, only to find that the bus wasn’t luxury, it was filthy and at least 20 years old. And they had allocated us… the seats at the back… the ones that don’t recline. We decided to wait until the next pickup (still in Delhi) and then make up our minds what to do. As we pulled up, it was obvious that things weren’t going to get any better as there were loads of Tibetans waiting to get on (and precisely one foreigner!). We jumped off and after a struggle managed to retrieve our bags from the boot. We couldn’t face a 12 hour journey on the back seats of the rickety bus (which had flung us all over the place just going through Delhi, heavens knows what the Himalayas would have done to it!).

So we got off and caught an auto-rickshaw back to New Delhi, and checked into a hotel down the road from the Ajanta.

We decided that we wouldn’t be going to Dharamsala after all, so rearranged our flight to Sri Lanka for Monday. We were both pretty disappointed as we wanted to go up into the foothills of the Himalayas, but we really couldn’t face the journey on those seats in that bus. It was the second time we’d been let down or lied to by the travel agent at the Ajanta so we were pretty angry.

On Sunday we caught an early train to Agra, and headed straight for the Taj Mahal. The entry fee was expensive (Rs.750 each) but well worth it. The building is magnificent, quite amazing, possibly the most photogenic structure I’ve seen. We took 65 photos (will try to upload some of them either today or in the next few days) and could have taken lots more.

The Taj was very busy but it was still possible to find places in the garden which were quiet and shaded.

Our rickshaw driver then took us to a good restaurant which was pricey compared to other places in India, but that’s pretty typical of Agra.

Next was Agra Fort, another Rs.250 each. The fort was nice, if a little delapidated. All of the rooms which the public are allowed in are empty and many have had their decoration removed or vandalised. Still a nice place to visit, but nowhere near as good as the Fort at Jodhpur.

After that it was the obligatory visit to a marble workshop/store where we declined the opportunity to buy over-priced marble inlay, and then back on the train to Delhi.

Today we’re at the airport waiting for our evening flight to Sri Lanka. We’ve got hotels booked for the first 3 nights while we find out how things are there.

…and back again.

That’s the story of the past week. Sleeper to Hospet on Monday night, not too bad at all, or we’re getting used to it. Hampi is 14km from the train station, about Rs100 by auto-rickshaw. We can now get all our baggage in an auto-rickshaw without too much pain.

Hampi is a really strange place. It’s also known as Vijayanagar and was the capital of the empire of the same name in the 15th and 16th centuries. The landscape is very odd, with huge boulders dominating the landscape.

The area is a mass of abandoned temples and palaces over a 25 sq.km site, and the village of Hampi providing accomodation etc in the center.

We were there until Friday evening, and spent a day or two wandering around the temples and monuments. You can get a bit “templed-out” after a while so we didn’t visit every site by any means.

We stayed at Gopi’s Hotel in Hampi, which was pleasant, though not as cheap as was indicated in the guide books. (Rs500 per night). They do great thalis there though, the “special thali” being almost too big to eat (though I will admit I managed it…)

There were lots of “souvenir” (aka tat) stalls around but we did buy a large brass hanging lamp from the Mango Tree restaurant which we now have to post home. Weighs a ton too.

Friday saw us getting yet another night train, back to Bangalore where we’ve been doing Western-stuff like ordering pizza in our hotel room (Vellara Hotel – on Brigade Road, excellent light, clean room with TV and great bathroom).
We’ve copied all the photos onto a CD which we’ll be posting home. I’ve only uploaded a few of those we’ve taken (we have about 600 on the CD), and I’ve had to reduce the resolution and compress them to make them slightly web-friendly.

We’re flying to Delhi on Tuesday morning (have to be at the airport for 3:50am!) and should then be getting a bus to Dharamshala.

Latest pictures start with this one

By using a bit of sneakiness, I’ve persuaded the internet cafe machine to let me do what I wanted…

Pictures start with this one just click on the arrows to see the rest.