un-abridged thailand journal…

you can read the full version here.

 

thanks to ally for transcribing it all.

 

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thailand 2009 journal (day 6 – end)

sadly with the turmoil in our house currently my little note book that i had been using to remind me of our adventure in thailand has gone missing.  so this post will be using my memory only and that is dangerous.

after having a relaxing day between the pool / the beach and our air conditioned room, the next day we booked our adventure on elephant back. 

during the ride ally mentioned to the ‘driver’ that she rode horses and a moment later she offered ally a go ‘driving’ an 50-year old elephant.  i must admit i quickly became the most nervour man on an elephant.

i had need not to worry as it turns out that ally is quite accomplished at driving elephants.  after one of the most tense hours of my life we made it back to the elephant base and we were treated to a rather cheesy ‘elephant show’ and we got to feed the elephants and i must admit they are very impressive beasts.

(the elephant put the hat on my head it is not mine honest….)

 

the remaining days were were spent doing a mixture of walking along the beach, siting at the pool and wandering around the town.  the only other things of specific note are a trip to ‘monkey mountain’ and a walk round the old railway station in which a film was shot, i cant remember which one.  

monkey mountain.

old railway station (sofitel hotel hua hin)

there was amazing topiary in the gardens the above picture is of a flock of massive birds that are flying across the gardens.

 

we enjoyed the town of hua hin and the night marketes ..

 

before we left we both plucked up the courage to venture down beside the pool to have a thai massage, i must admit i had seen the contortions of other holiday makers and i was convinced it was an impossibility for my body to do the same.  we paid about £6 for a 60-min session and we lay down beside each-other and then they began…..  how can such a small delicate masseuse manipulate my head, legs, back and arms into such positions? it felt like they had a selection of secret and invisible tools to assist them.  i will never know how they managed it, but i must say it was great and i felt alive and extremely flexible.

on the 6th of February we flew home and arrived to a whole other adventure, which is now taking up most of our free time and spare energy.

 

more will follow on that.

 

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thailand 2009 journal (day five)

up early for our last mammoth breakfast at the hotel then a three hour transfare to hua hin.

 

we arrived at the chomview complex around lunch time.  it is a lovely family run hotel just  couple of minutes outside the town centre.

  

the hotel reminded us both of the young peoples taem at ellel pierrepont. where we worked for a few years.  most of the staff wher under 25 and seemed to be laughing constantly, 

in the evening we got the free hotel bus into town and wandered round hua hin. the town is much bigger than we expected.  

 

we had a starbucks coffee in a fantastically air conditioned building and then waited for the courtesy bus to take us back to the hotel.  it did not arrive, giving us the perfect opportunity to have one of my highlights of the holiday as we got a tuc-tuc back to the hotel.

it was great fun and sadly it was over all to soon.

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Thailand 2009 journal (day four)

i was up early and went on a tour of the Royal palace and Temple.  the structures and history are fascinating and i really enjoyed the guide who was a retired school teacher who had studied in Switzerland and the UK.  he was full of information and most of it i had never heard before.  

for example;  if a thai national is found posessing a copy of the film ‘anna and the king’ they could possibly face a prison sentence as it is baned in thailand.

you will have to ask me in person about all the rest if you are intrested.

later ally and i went to the MBK shopping centre.

this place is massive and to be honest we only got to look round a tiny wee corner of it before we where ehausted.

 

we got the sky train back to near the hotel.  the reason i said near was that the last stop was a couple of miles from the hotel and i wanted a walk in the city, but ally did not.  we wandered into a park and saw a rather strange and funny sight.  i large group of people doing an open-air dance aerobics class in the park beside a major busy motorway.

 

we where tired and beginning to suffer from bangkok lung by the time we made it back home but 

thankfully we had an amazing hotel to return to and rest and recover from our experience.

 

 

Thailand is trully an amazing and slightly strange place and i must admit i am intrigued by it.

 

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Thailand 2009 journal (day three)

had breakfast at the hotel and feasted it was great.  walked round the hotel and surrounding area, trying to acclimatise to the temperature change.  

in the afternoon we went to the thai adoption centre to meet the thai social worker.  she saw us for 30min and answered some of our questions.  

she then arranged for us to travel to a children’s home in Bangkok to have a look round.  we eventually made it after a lengthy and nervous taxi ride across town.  the centre was a great facility and the workers were helpful and pleasant.  the children even in this great facility showed some signs of institutionalisation and some of it was a bit of a shock.  we enjoyed watching the litle children play and get fed.

Bangkok has a particular aroma to it, it is rather hard to pin down and describe.  my best attempt is that it smells like a mixture of cookinig oil & engin oil.  quite an assault on the nasal passage.

 

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thailand 2009 journal (day two)

we arrive at our hotel 9-am after a rather long 22-hrs travel time. the hotel was awesome and very posh for us.  

 

 

we were greeted by a usher in the most amazing uniform and all our bags were whisked off by the bell boys, i could get used to this sort of treatment.

after several hours of much needed kip we ventured into Bangkok to the night markets.  this was an experience that has to be felt, no words can really describe it.  

one thing i will say is that the pavements in the city are litteleraly ‘crazey paved’  i dont think in our whole time in thailand we walked allong a pavement that was flat and unbroken.  it was a miracle if you could walk for more than a few paces without stumbling or tripping on a rather mean and misplace piece of what i can only asume was part of the pavement at some time in the past.

we than made it back home via a rather disgruntled taxi driver that alison wanted to jump out of his taxi.

 

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thailand 2009 journal (day one)

it begins:

 

thanks to china airlines we eventually arrived in Bangkok in the early hours of Tuesday 27th January.

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we are home

but we had such a surprise awiting us.

 

more will follow, after some sleep.

 

S

waiting

well we are now on our way.  this is coming from amsterdam airport.

will contunie from THAILAND.

 

S:

from A – to – B

 

Today was my last dat at work for a whole 17 days.  whoho….. i hear you say.  we are off to sunny and warm Thailand in the early hours of monday morning.  one of the things i am definitely looking forward to is a tuk-tuk ride.   

 

what is your favourite method of transport to get from A- to -B?

 

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