Hola from Thailand …

… very delayed hello but a hello nonetheless.
I’ve been terribly slack with my mammoths this time, mostly because internet is so much more expensive in SE Asia than it was India, in fact everything is, TAKE ME BACK my wallet is screaming at me, I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like when I have to get back to pounds, SO EXPENSIVE! I can definitely see a few scenes in a normal shop where I forget that you can’t haggle a loaf of bread down from 40p to 30, it’s just such a normal thing to do right now
Anyway I am in Thailand now and the last post was India and have since visited Singapore, Malaysia and as of today Burma and it has been incredible but so totally different to India, I’m not quite sure which I prefer.
So far we’ve found it has been a lot more catered to us, we knew India was going to be much more of a challenge but after having spent two months there we embraced it as a way of life and now the availability of almost everything and the return to civilisation makes me almost miss the chaos.
When we first arrived in Singapore from Mumbai (what a transition), we had more culture shock than we’d had for the entire trip yet. it was SO CLEAN it felt surreal, as though we’d been superimposed into a weird film with perfect grass and perfectly arranged flowers and perfectly painted buildings, so we were very glad when our taxi took us to our hostel and we found it was ironically in the area of Singapore called Little India! It made us feel slightly more as though we belonged in the place. It sounds ridiculous but after months of walking anywhere you wanted as long as you avoided the poo and cows, we found it really difficult to walk on pavements, which hadn’t really been a concept we’d experienced at all in India.

Although I’m glad we experienced the surrealism of Singapore and had a chance to clean up a little, we felt immense relief when we crossed the border into Malaysia and saw rubbish on the streets, were stared at by scary looking men and the prices were dropped dramatically – Singapore was one expensive mistake after another!
Malaysia we started off in a stupid town called Melaka, which we left after only one night because it was so empty and boring, the most interesting thing was the clock tower and that was dull, so the bus to KL called us.
This was a town we were much more impressed by, Kl was awesome! We stayed for two nights to begin with and visited the MASSIVELY huge and impressive Petronas towers, although Freya had a giggle when we got onto the bridge and I asked whether that was it. I sound very stupid, but it was only because the glass floor had been hyped up so much and it turned out that there was no glass floor, it must’ve been covered up recently because of too many people fainting or something.
We also got STUPIDLY conned by a phone sales man in KL which made us angry at the city, but not angry enough to dislike it, we still love it and it’s really cool monorail. He sold us a sim card for 10 pounds that he claimed would work for the whole of South East Asia, but as soon as we got into Thailand and tried to top up we were informed it was strictly for Malaysian use only. If we ever see that man again he will be sorry.
From KL we went on to spend a couple of nights in the Malaysian jungle/rainforest, which was amazing. Although we didn’t see many creatures, we saw plenty of deadly looking insects and got to experience jungle life a little, trekking through the canopy and visiting a native tribe which was an awesome experience.
After three days in the wild we went back to civilisation to KL, where we had a horrible wait until 12 midnight roaming the streets before our overnight bus into Thailand, to a town over the border called Had Yai. SE Asia are THE coldest thing in the world, literally like sitting in a fridge. Thank the lord I decided to bring warm clothes with me after our last experience, I was covered all over my body including my face to stop me from going purple – how ridiculous for it to be 30 odd degrees outside and minus temp inside?!
Anyway we arrived at Thai border control only to discover that the 30 days we thought that we were allowed in Thailand was only for people arriving by air, and that people who come via land only get two weeks, poo bags. This affected our plans, but we couldn’t speed them up any more because wed decided we had to go to the infamous full moon on the 30th, so were forced to wait and then do the visa run to burma this morning – not sure quite how official it was, but were safe here until the 15th now so it’s all good
So from Had Yai (worst town ever, where we stayed in an absolute prison cell of a room that looked like it was out of a 70s mental institute) we bused and boated it to Koh Phangan, the most gorgeous island I’ve ever been to. There we met up with our Aussie friends that wed spent new year with, who are now our absolute best friends and were seeing them again in a couple of weeks. We chilled out with them for a while, beached on the whitest sands and bluest waters, rented scooters and saw waterfalls and elephants before they left to go to vietnam and we stayed on for full moon. Best decision ever, full moon was incredible, thousands upon thousands of people covered in UV paints drinking buckets and dancing around fire and water on a beautiful beach, absolutely amazing. Some people took ‘the best party on earth’ a bit too literally and when we went down to see the state of the beach at 4 o’clock in the afternoon next day, there were still people only just getting up off the sand from having passed out all day.
After that nights awesomeness we packed our stuff in preparation for our next gigantic journey, our overnight boat(which was very odd and felt as though we were aboard a floating orphanage) and then our visa run to Burma, another crazy experience where small boys kept taking our passports away and showing them to angry looking army men with guns and offering to sell us drugs, they can’t have been more than 8 years old!
We survived the ordeal though and are currently in Krabi, where were getting a boat in a couple of hours to head over to Phi Phi (prounounced pee pee, not fifi as we had a good chuckle over) which were very excited about, where were hopefully gonna get a chance to do some snorkelling and cliff diving. After Phi Phi were heading north to Bangkok to see the ladyboys, then maybe to the River Kwai and from there Chiang Mai, before saying smell ya later Thailand and going to join our boys in Laos for some tubing on the Vang Vieng. We’ve not planned past that yet but for now this has been sufficient and we will continue our spontaneous journey for as long as is possible.
Can’t belive only a month is left, I never want to come home or leave Freya, we haven’t even finished this trip yet and were already planning our next one, talk about wishing your time away eh?
I’ve got to run, our breakfast is calling and so is our waiting boat, but hopefully I won’t be as slack with the posts from now on and you’ll receive at least one more before I reluctantly board the plane back home.
Hope everyone and everything is cool and I send bucketloads of sun and love,
Marta xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx