Thomas: One week in Asia and my digestion of the street stall food still works well!
Rebecca: Seems that Peru has finally strengthened your stomach.
T: Let's see how India will be.
R: Still another 5 months and many, many kilometers till we get there! As soon as our China visas are ready to be collected in Bangkok, we will head to Northeren Thailand, cross the border to Laos and spend maybe 2 weeks there. I am already excited what the country will look like, 6 years after I've been there.
T: With the China visa in our pockets we will surely do our China adventure including Tibet (hopefully!!!). Well, from day to day it becomes more questionable if we can get our travel permit for Tibet (you can't just travel to Tibet independently). We are happy about the news that Tibetans are standing up and the Dalai Lhama adressed Beijing harshly. If it comes to more freedom for the oppressed people of the Himalayan region we cannot be more happy for them and our not (yet) realised visit becomes sooooo unimportant. Anyway, if we make it up there we will cross over the high passes to Nepal where we will (hopefully) met parts of my family. My brother, being an expat in Bombay, his wife, my cousin and his wife may join us for some weeks there.
R: We plan to spend 2 months in China/Tibet, hopefully the visa extension will be possible. Along with Thomas' family, we will also meet the monsoon in Nepal - and that will hit us totally when we'll reach India around July.
T: But what have we been doing the last week in Thailand? If we stayed all the time hiere in Ko Chang island - on this white sand we are sitting now on - this would be a rather short entry. So, let me start with the time we spent in busy Bangkok. It was all different to western-style New Zealand. The night we arrived at the super modern airport welcomed us with humidity and 28 degree Celsius. We headed to the public taxi stand, conscious of the touts.
R: 1st dramatic change from Australia/NZ: the weather. 2nd: "exotic" business style with haggling, cheating & touting. Third: the service desert of NZ (shops closing at 5pm, e.g.) we entered the service jungle where you can get everything at any time provided you have the cash. E.g., for our visa application we handed over passports & the fee and that was it; 10min at the travel agent.
T: 4th change: Everything you need, you oget for little money. You don't have to think about the beer prize or eating out or that you limit you internet time. To put in a nutshell, in NZ we had to service ourselves, here we are serviced.
R: In the first 2 days, we were busy with organising the coming weeks, shopping and enjoyig our luxurious 16EUR hotel: swimming pool, big bed, private bathroom. Before leaving to the island, Thomas even managed to visit 2 beautiful major tempels, plus we went out on Kao San Road.
T: When we planned where to go and chose Ko Chang, we did it also because there are opportunities for day-trips. For example, renting a motor-bike to visit waterfalls of trips by boat to the smaller surrounding islands. But what we are actually doing is doing nothing. And Lonely Beach which is not lonely is exactly the right place for that.
R: Koh Chang is quite big and tHat Ta Nam (Lonely Beach village) is one of the places furthest away from the ferry landing. We took a Sangthaew (pick-up truck with seats on the back) to this village, a 30min ride that took us along the pretty coast, through touristy road villages and through thick jungle. The road was narrow, steep and winding. The guidebook says it claims a few tourists lives every year; inexperienced motor-bikers who aren't able to deal with the conditions. And indeed, we did see a couple in the trench of a hairpin-bend, fortunately with only a few scratches.
We immediately liked Ta Nam: some houses, simple restaurants & souvenir shops along the road and more hostels, open-air bars and eateries along the 2 paths leading to the beach through the palm forest. We are staying in a basic bungalow (8EUR) with a big bed and a bucket bathroom (your 'flush' with water from a bucket and there's no normal shower). It's clean enough, quiet and only 10min from the beach.
T: The beach is long and white, palm trees provide shade from the hot sun and the water is a little bit too warm. We eat a lot of delicious Thai food (grilled Red Snapper, for example, or spicy Red Curry). We sweat a lot in the humid heat and consequently don't do much apart from lying on the beach. Saturday night, we partied hard for the first time in weeks: a cool beach party on a wooden etrrace above the sea, with lanterns and loads of cool young people. Great night!
R: So, please keep your fingers crossed for Tibet and the Tibetans and the rest of our trip - you'll hear from us from Northern Thailand or Laos!
P.S.: Check out our NZ and Aussie entries - we've uploaded many many pictures!
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