aussie rules!

Having a fabulous time in Australia. As soon as we get chance to load up some images we will get to an internet cafe and post.
Had a brilliant week in Sydney ending in a celebration of Australia Day with some friends on Bronte Beach. Flew to Adelaide for a night with Eds wonderful Godafather and family and now bombing around the country in a campervan- vineyards and BBQs galore. We are in our element. Pics and details to follow.

A MASSSIVE thank you to the Ozzie Smiths for an amazing BBQ and showing us the non-touristy side to Sydney, to JOD for two fantastic meals and great company, Liane, Simon and the kids and cats for a wicked Oz Day and to Jim Barnard and family for showing us Adelaide and scaring us with spiders and snakes stories ; )

Honeymoon proper

We had a pick up organised from the pier in Phuket and the driver drove us through the island to our hotel on the south east coast.

We’ll let the pictures do the talking! xx

Outdoor shower

View from sun*deck of pool and into bedroom

* lack of sun on actual 'sundeck' meant we actually asked to move villas on day two, we now are far too busy soaking up sun outside the villa to take new pics of the new villa, I will endeavour to do so, when I can be bothered to stop enjoying my Honeymoon. NB. new villa is similar but is now one long building instead of two separate bungalows, the bedroom is simply a glass room seemingly floating on our aqua tiled pool, huge lounge, smaller bathroom but an outside sunken bath to enjoy starlit skies, oh and we now have sunset views....not too shabby x

Edge of pool and out to the Andaman sea, we would be greeted by dragonflies, butterflies and eagles

Dinner and bubbles (South African sparkling wine) -menu is bit steeper than we've been used to, but no sign of Rattie here.

Sunset from our new villa

Somewhere unplanned....

We still had a few days to see somewhere before the luxe week in Phuket (honeymoon territory), we’d originally planned to head to Khao Sok National Park but having done the elephant ride and hotsprings it seemed an expensive trip to do given that we’d probably end up doing similar activities. Recalling a conversation we had had with one of the many chatty bar owners on Koh Lanta we decided to head to Koh Yao Noi. A little island inbetween Koh Phi Phi and Phuket that although easy to get to (in fact the quickest and nicest boat journey we have had) we had not met one person that had said they were heading there or had even heard of it, sounded perfect!

Having learnt my lesson of not sorting accommodation, I had booked ahead and organised a pick up from the pier. Yet again it was just Ed and I getting off the boat to the island, brilliant sign.

What followed was a very chilled out three days of driving around the island on yet another moped, this time exploring rice fields and rubber plantations, dodging a couple of massive snakes, being the only tourists at the local's weekend market, eating doughnuts at the market (Ed) and enjoying more Thai curries (Sarah). More bliss, the beaches aren’t up to much on Koh Yao Noi-hence the lack of tourists- but it was the most normal/local island we saw. Every time we passed someone on the roads or in the small town they waved and smiled, welcomingly.

This island was not just about tourism, we constantly saw people working the land and building homes rather hotels. It was very refreshing. The handful of resorts/bungalows on the island did appear to be ‘Farang’ (Foreigner) run probably bought up years ago when they anticipated a tourist boom like Phi Phi and Phuket but now they seemed to just appreciate that they had a fairly busy tourist season and then got to enjoy their island again when the tourists disappeared in low season.
We had a very cute bungalow with a loft space with a bed, the only downside was the return of Rattie. Packing up our bags on our last morning Ed went to put his rucksack on and it completely fell off his back, I started the whole “I told you not to swing it with one strap like that, it's a heavy bag, of course it will break” line but before I could finish it became apparent the strap hadn’t snapped it had been chewed.....
On further inspection he had a hole in the side of his bag, through the handle and the strap. Annoyed we informed the owner, explaining what a lovely stay we had had yet this was an expensive bag that was now broken. She wasn’t very apologetic really, asking if we had had food in our room (of course not, don't want to encourage things) and exclaiming that rats were here before us and will be here after us!
Annoyed we tried to brush it off thinking about the luxury we about to get a boat to. Ed and I moaned to each other about how if we’d had food we’d understand but that it was just super annoying and a nuisance. I reassured him the next place would not have rats.
Waiting at the pier for our boat to Phuket, Ed took a closer look at his bag... and discovered an empty packet of dairy milk buttons... hmmmm seems he may have encouraged wee little rattie along himself, afterall!

Island life

Roadside diner, pretty good view, no?

Another fairly average view ; )

Kayaking to a deserted island Wedding Gift No.5b Thanks to Loz and Ali

Arrival at deserted island

Next stop....honeymoon hotel!

Railey, Mud, Elephants and Pirate trousers

Classic scene, normally to be found with blue sky backdrop

Railey was not super impressive, compared to the quieter islands we had come from this was much more tourist territory, folks arriving on two week packages.



It was lovely scenery despite the poor weather we had, we literally had to go through a curtain of rain to get to the island! Again I left Ed and ran round the island trying to find accommodation, not quite sure how I landed up with the short straw-maybe i’m slightly fussier on accommodation, anyhow, soaked to the bone I found a nice room in a fairly busy ‘resort’ for three nights.



Our time in Railey was spent doing excursions off of Railey! We had a day kayaking around caves with amazing stalagmites and stalactites as well as some pretty impressive cave paintings (Wedding gift No.5a Thanks to Kim). The following day we had an epic all day trip. Visiting a beautiful emerald coloured freshwater pool, amazing hot springs and finally taking in an hours elephant ride through the jungle, awesome! Wedding gift No.6 thanks to Rowie and Paddy, Abs and Austin and Margherita and Mike.

Local layabouts


Cave temple offerings



WEDDING GIFT NO.5

Top tip No.1: Do Not follow Sarah when she thinks she has a more direct (than the locals know) route to the hotel, especially when mud flats are to be found.

Top tip No.2 Mud flats can be very deep!

The.Best.Tattoo I have ever seen

Ed gave in and I was allowed to buy some 'Pirate Trousers'/fisherman pants. Lucy, too much?!

Again please add blue sky back drop

No beard!

Next stop? Paradise!

We couldn’t really be bothered to leave Koh Lanta as we really enjoyed it but before we knew it we’d spent a week there and we wanted to see more so we jumped on a boat to Koh Kradan, a smaller quieter island two and a half hours away - needless to say when we were sold the ticket they said it took 80 mins, clearly he meant 180mins but by this point we’ve learnt to just get on the first mode of transport and just see what happens! It was fab as the speedboat had been fully booked we got a slower boat (crap) but there was only 6 of us on it, all up on the top deck, enjoying the view and the sunshine. Lush, and only Ed and I headed to our Island... a sign of the quiet island to come.
Koh Kradan is one of the Trang Islands in the very far south of Thailand. We’d called ahead to book a room as there are only four beach resorts/hotels on Koh Kradan so we didn’t want to leave it to chance with no easy way off the island. We jumped off the boat through the sea and onto the beach-no pier here! And walked up to the hotel on the beach, a guy greeted us looking pretty surprised to see two folks with rucksacks, asking if we had a booking we said yes, that we’d called two days ago and this is what we’d been quoted blah blah..the conversation then proceeded as follows
”I have no rooms” came his response
“ah” said Ed and I in unison.
“... so where can we stay?”,
“we have a room tomorrow night”,
“Lovely but that’s no help to us now, where else can we try?”
And he grunted and pointed to his left and behind him, try “Kalume and Paradise Lost”.
We are so bloody English Ed and I, what we should have done is said OK, your cock up, please can you call them and see if they have availability. Instead I left Ed with the bags as I ran off to check the rooms. Just as I started towards the first bungalows the heavens opened and I was completely drenched, quite funny in hindsight but at the time, it just kind of added to my annoyance! Anyhow long story short, fourty minutes later I found us a really nice bungalow, far superior to the one we had booked and less expensive. A wooden bungalow but sturdy and solid with the best bathrooms we’ve seen “since Jenny and Matt’s the morning we flew” Ed claimed!
We checked in and had a yummy dinner at the bungalows, chilled out and read up on where we could go after the next stop (Railey).

The following morning the weather was awesome and we were up and about at eight (earliest non travelling day!) We grabbed some snorkelling bits and headed to the South Beach, amazing. We were the first people on the beach and had a great time swimming out to see the fishes. Very scary looking sea urchins and amazing Angel fish.

South Beach

Back to the beach for some sunbathing and then off to the other beach on the other side of the island (ten minute walk) for lunch. Now we are talking idyllic, after lunch we walked along towards the end of the beach, away from the couple of hotels and we had 200 metres one side and 800 metres the other before we reached a person. The sea here is Aqua, the island is surrounded by other islands and Karts in the distance jutting out into the sea. It was the most perfect afternoon, out of some kind of dream. I even got a little annoyed with myself for falling asleep on the beach as I felt i’d wasted my time not soaking it all in!
Pure bliss. We desperately wanted to stay another night but with no ATM and hotels not taking credit card we had to get off the island ; (
Luckily for us, the weather turned the next morning so it would have been a wasted day anyhow as the wind krept up and the sky turned grey.
We headed on to Railey 5 hours away on another longer than quoted boat trip!

Amazing water

Amazing beard

Happy New Year

What followed the bungalow move was a week of relaxing! We hired another moped and bombed around the island finding smaller more secluded beaches, complete bliss, exactly what we’d come for, exactly what we hoped for and exactly what we needed after the hectic first two weeks.

Average day on Koh Lanta part 1.






Average day on Koh Lanta part 2

Average day on Koh Lanta part 3

We tore ourselves away from the moped (Ed) and the beach (Sarah) and partook in a fun cooking class, thanks to Rach and Mike (Wedding gift No.4) We were able to pick the class that covered the dishes we loved so Rach and Mike we can now cook you homemade spring rolls, Tom Kah Kai (spicy coconut chicken soup), Stirfry with ginger (Mum you are going to love this one) and Panang curry. Brilliant! It was a really fun way to spend an afternoon and great to learn about the different elements to Thai cooking and the dishes we’ve loved trying. Incidently Ed’s Tom Kha Kai was better than mine (i’d got over enthusiastic –again- with the chilli) and my Panang beat Ed’s so we make a good team!

Cooking up a storm

Eating said storm!

The following night was New Years Eve. We really liked the new beach we were on and were happy to stay on there for the night. It was mostly couples and young families so it was super relaxed and friendly. We went to a couple of bars, I had the most amazing BBQ’d fish and we made a few wishes for 2011. A perfect night - Beautiful way to end a wonderful year and an exciting way to start the next year, an exciting few months ahead.

Happy 2011.

Cheers, Happy 2011!

Making a wish for 2011



NB. Check out Ed's epic beard! He left it for another 5 days. will try and dig out some piccies!

Island Living

Koh Lanta is such a perfect Island for us. It was recommended by a couple of people for a good island to go to if we want a bit of life but not be surrounded by too many drunken backpackers. And spot on they were too. We were probably about the average age, we were staying on Long Beach and it had a nice back packer vibe, the kind where you start having the same conversations with everyone about where you’ve been, where you are going etc. It’s nice actually, you have only a few conversations about what you do, I feel like at home when you meet people one of the first questions we ask is ‘what do you do?’ It’s how we pop people in their boxes, creatives, sales, people jobs etc, but when you are travelling what we do at home/left behind is irrelevant, it’s about what we’ve experienced already or what we are excited about experiencing next. You even see the difference between the conversations you have with ‘travellers’ and tourists/holiday makers in the where are you going vs what do you do question.
I guess with the travellers asking about what we’ve seen and where we are heading helps us to categorise people too, those hitting the smaller/quieter islands I think are perceived as searching for more, searching harder and often it’s the older people going to those places, while the younger travellers are heading to the party islands and much more mainstream destinations....and at the same time while we are heading to the slightly harder to get to places, we still get small frowns when we say we haven’t got time to get up to the North to explore Chiang Mai ( a very popular trekking destination where everyone tells us is wonderful).
We mostly just hung out the first afternoon, getting a feel for the beach and island. We ate at a restaurant on the beach and it was delicious, surrounded by nice people and under a canopy of stars like we haven’t seen for ages!

On our return to the ‘rustic’ bungalow we were greeted by a cockroach and a fast moving slug in the bathroom. Needless to say I waited til the morning to use the bathroom again that night. The weather wasn’t great the next day so rather than the planned day of lying on the beach we hired a moped. Awesome! Ed loved it! We bombed around the island scouting out the other beaches and found Khlong Nin which was a couple of beaches down. After asking in a gazillion hotels we found one with availability for new years eve as we had decided we didn’t fancy waking up to Cockroaches in 2011.
Driving around, it poured with rain on us and i’m not convinced Ed could see completely clearly while driving but we had a fab day, heading over to the East side of the island to suss out the Old Town and had a spot of lunch. A very wet grey day but fun nonetheless. That night we decided to try somewhere more local for dinner so headed to ‘Mr Greens’ on the ‘main road’ rather than the beach front. It was our first venture back into proper street food since Rattie in Bangkok.
I finally got to try my Panang curry, a hot red curry that is dry unlike the creamy coconut milk laden red and green curries we can get at home. It was delicious but ridiculously hot! I managed about half and that was to be polite. Ed had a yummy green curry.
On our return to our room we were tonight greeted by the biggest spider i have ever seen. Big, meaty, hairy bugger it was! A friendly gecko had taken up home in the roof earlier that day-but we liked him (Prickles) as he ate flies, but the spider had even scared off Prickles. It was at this point we decided to pop down to the pre booked hotel first thing the next morning to see if they would have us a day early! Rustic I can cope with, the toilet, the cold water no problem but the bugs and spiders i’m afraid really get to me. A very sleepless night was had with the spider and we dashed to the hotel in the morning to see if we could come early, we could and I was super happy.
Back to the bungalow for brekkie and checkout and then on to new hotel two beaches down. Still a very simple bungalow but this time, solid concrete walls-much better. Plus I didn’t mention that the last place the water really smelt! So even when you washed you didn’t feel clean. The first bungalow had a brilliant chilled out feel, really wonderful staff and food but it became apparent that perhaps Ed and I are more flash-packers than back-packers, not sure we’ll last six months though, flash packing is way more expensive!

View from our old bungalow

View from our new bungalow (almost!)

Bangkok-Koh Lanta, a journey and a half

At £6 a night, you can't really expect much more.

It’s nearly two weeks since I last blogged. We have spent the most amazing and chilled out couple of weeks on Thailand’s Andaman Coast. It’s funny i thought i’d be able to blog loads during this time but i think with the hectic past couple of weeks we just relished doing nothing!
But first, we had to get back to Bangkok. We caught an early morning bus to Bangkok, not too awful. Ten hours, although two of those hours were spent queuing to get back into Thailand. Once through the border we were ‘upgraded’ to a minibus. Hmmmm not quite an upgrade. We definitely got back to Bangkok speedier than the original bus but where we’d left a fairly comfortable air con bus with toilet we were now ‘upgraded’ to a minibus where two seats were taken up with all our bags and the ten of us were squashed into the van, poor Ed had the centre back seat with bags all down by his feet so he couldn’t stretch his legs or see out the front or side windows, pretty dull bus journey! We were relieved to see the skytrain and realise we were back in Bangkok.
Having not known how long we would want in Siem Reap we hadn’t booked any onward travel, we jumped in a tuk tuk and sped to the train station with the hope of getting a sleeper train to Krabi that night. Somewhat naive! Being also a Thai public holiday the train was fully booked for three days! We didn’t fancy hanging around more in BKK so we went to see what the overnight buses to the South were like.
We were sold ‘VIP’ direct tickets all the way to Koh Lanta for the next day (our island destination for New Years Eve) Brilliant we thought, and left the station for a night back in our previous hotel in BKK.

It was nice to be somewhere familiar, to know the streets and the places to go, BKK is probably the only city we will visit a few times over during this trip. Starving we headed straight to the streetfood stall we had eaten at a number of times during our previous visit. The only available seat was above the drain but we knew the food was good so we grinned and bared the smell and placed our order, green curry for Ed, Pad Thai for me. A few moments later a table off the street came available so we moved. Chatting over how nice it was to have some familiar things again we saw things flash past the corner of our eyes, Ed shot me a nervous look and tried to ignore it but it quickly became apparent there was a rat or two keeping us company. Now, we live in London, i’m pretty sure there are rats everywhere and we weren’t TOO worried. But then we started seeing more and Ed kept a close eye on them and saw they were taking the tomatoes out of the low shelves and stealing them away or munching on them.
We couldn’t take it, we left the money for our food we’d ordered and dashed off before it arrived. We were so sad, we’d eaten there quite a lot and the food had been really delicious but seeing how involved the rats were with our food just completely put us off! Heading back to our hotel we munched on omelette/burger and chips-bit safer, it took a while to get back into street food!

After a lazy day at our hotel, catching up on emails, blogging and sorting accommodation for Koh Lanta, we headed to the station to pick up our VIP DIRECT bus armed with Ipods, scarves for warmth in case of too much air con and snacks at the ready.
Due to leave at seven thirty we were taken to stand outside the bus at seven twenty five. Our tickets were checked and we donned our sexy stickers to indicate where we were headed. After making us stand outside with no explanation for an hour they let us on the bus, a fun start to the journey. The strangest thing was that we’d booked a direct bus, yet it was full of folks going to a plethora of island destinations and half of them on the other side of Thailand - on its East Coast....

Still on we got, settled down and tried very hard to snooze. Around 1am they stopped for a toilet break (don’t even ask about the loo on the bus-i got stuck in it momentarily when suitcases fell in front of the door!) and snack break (all an excuse for the drivers to have a cigarette) back on we stopped again around 5.30am and told to all get off. “Change bus” they shouted, so much for direct. Our tickets were checked again and we were given another sticker.
We were told to jump in a minibus that would take us to Krabi (where we could pick up the boat to Koh Lanta), a little while later we were told to get out again. Our stickers were observed and again we got rather fetching new stickers, my top was running out of room for stickers, I hoped they would stop soon.
This time we got told to jump in a pick up truck, I should mention that at each stop we are getting smaller and smaller groups as we get closer to our various destinations. So now we are 8 and we jump in the back of a pick up, surrounded by our luggage. A very short while later, the pick up stops and out we jump, assuming we must be walking distance to the pier (our first sight of the Andaman Sea). Again stickers are exchanged for another brighter colour sticker, an aggressive sales woman trying to find us expensive accommodation on the island and we get shuttled back in to the pick up.
Obviously this whole time we do ask people where we are and where we are going but they just tell you to wait or get on a bus, seemingly the only two options on the road, and after about 2 hours sleep between us, we are too tired to question them too much. Moments later we stop, we must be at the pier now, but no we get put on another mini bus. I just don’t get it, this is a) not VIP and b) not Direct!
We’d had such a lovely bus trip from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap in Cambodia I thought that Thailand being a richer country would be a similar if not better experience-oh dear, how naive I was.
So we are on yet another mini bus, we get chatting to a nice Scottish guy next to me and I ask if the bus will leave soon as the boat goes at eleven?, “the boat?”, he remarks “this is for the chain ferry”. So, not only was it not a direct, VIP bus, i wasn’t even getting on a bloody boat! He later said that my face when he told me there was no boat was hilarious.
Anyhow, we got chatting to Alessio and he asked if we had anywhere booked, we said we had somewhere we were heading as we know they had availability but nothing booked, he worked in a place on the beach we’d hoped to stay on (but hadn’t found availability) and said we could check it out, no pressure.
He was a nice guy. We headed with him once on the island (via two bloody car ferries) to his place. The owner showed us the bungalow with private bathroom, it was very rustic with a cold water hosepipe for a shower and a bucket to flush the loo, no sink. But the bed was comfy and it had a mozzie net-plus it was 300 baht, which is about £6 so we thought we would go for it for a couple of nights. We dumped our stuff and headed straight to the beach (a two minute walk from our bamboo bungalow).

Bliss, after a 17 hour journey on a gazillion buses and no blooming ferry we were finally at our island break.

Christmas in Angkor

Christmas morning we had a little lie in and grabbed the bikes from the hotel. Arriving at Angkor Wat around midday, it was spectacular, almost empty, i guess a combination of Xmas day travellers hanging back at their hotels and folks escaping the heat to get lunch. I would fully recommend visiting the temples around this time, we pretty much had it to ourselves!
After a wander around A.W we cycled on to Angkor Thom, our favourite of all the temples we visited. It has the most amazing faces carved into the stone towers.
We then simply cycled around for a few hours, we must have covered about 25km. To be honest we tried to find some temples we hadn’t done previously but we took a wrong turning so just enjoyed the ride. This area of Cambodia is completely flat and so it was a very easy journey, the light was amazing and we made the most of having a hot sunny Christmas day! Recounting to each other how our families ‘do’ Christmas and how we might do it in the future.

Christmas Day, mode of transport

Angkor Thom

Back for showers and then the plan was to have a ‘Cambodian BBQ’ and a quiet night as we had a tuk tuk collecting us at 7.30 the next day for the bus ride back to Bangkok.

Cambodian BBQs rock!

Essentially it is a round hot plate that is domed with a wide lip around the side. A gas flame is below the hotplate, soup is poured into the wide lip and heated, noodles and vegetables are added, then on the domed part you cook your meats. The meat juices run into the soup and you have yourself a very delicious Christmas dinner!
You can pick your meats and we were fairly cautious, avoiding snake and frogslegs, instead going for chicken, beef, prawns, crocodile and ostrich. Our favourite was the Ostrich, crocs are chewy! I managed to peel the King Prawns, but missed Melissa as she is chief Prawn peeler for me whenever I eat them, Meli you would have been so proud of me!
Again we got chatting to the table next to us, two guys in their late 40s from London. We ended up joining them in quite a lot of beer drinking and i do believe a couple of shots of sambuca were partaken in. So much for the quiet, early night! We had a giggle with them and one of them had lived in Oz so had some tips for where to visit when we get there.
Back to the hotel for a speedy pack up ready for the bus on Boxing Day to take us back to Bangkok.
We really missed our families on Christmas day and I especially missed the Christmas Eve Olive Branch tradition but we had such a fantastic time, a beautiful day seeing beautiful things and it was lovely to just hang out together.

Also a very special hello to a little someone, best news ever. Miss you, Super excited x

Cambodian BBQ, with ostrich

Perfect Cambodian Christmas Dinner!