Bangkok

My only preparation for coming to Thailand was to read the book, 'The Beach'. I didn't bother with my Lonely Planet, as I've discovered the SE Asia version is pretty crap, and it doesn't even have pretty pictures like my other LPs did.

So I arrived at Bangkok airport, with no hotel reservation and not really knowing where to go. I decided to get a taxi (after much bus-searching) to the Khao San Road, which Alex Garland describes as 'a decompression chamber for anyone entering or leaving Thailand'. He's right, it is, but I imagined a quiet scene full of friendly backpackers drinking at cafes. I stepped out of the taxi and my senses were attacked from all sides. The sounds of music from the competing bootleg CD stalls, the colourful market stalls selling everything a backpacker might need, the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke, and the feel of hundreds of people pushing past me and my rucksack as I stood there taking it all in. Also, the sound of someone shouting my name. Confused, I turned round to see Dave & Amy, the couple who I had met in Kaikoura, running towards me. I'd completely forgotten they were coming to Thailand.

Dave and Amy stopped me going into the nasty looking guesthouse I was standing in the doorway of, and took me to their hotel, a nice, clean, quiet and cheap affair located a couple of streets away. They also took me out that evening for a true backpacker welcome, and got me completely pissed. First night madness was a great night.

I had unfortunately arrived during some sort of Buddhist festival, which meant alcohol was a big no-no. One of my rules as a traveller is 'do as the locals do', but in this case I was desperate for a beer and as I haven't yet converted to Buddhism, I thought I would be ok. We found a cafe that would surreptitiously sell us beer, as long as we drank it out of mugs and pretended they were cups of tea. That was fine with me, as I think all alcohol tastes better drunken out of a mug.

We soon moved onto drinking rum & coke - buying a bottle of each from the 7-11 and mixing them together, standing on the street, like a load of pikeys. It was great, there were tons of people there (including lots of Thais), all doing similar things, and it was like some sort of weird, outdoors, messed up nightclub. The cacophony of music and flashing lights from the various stalls and bars was a bit crazy.

The next morning I woke up with a predictable hangover, but a shower, breakfast and a couple of tablets of nurofen later I felt ok. In the afternoon I had arranged to meet Colin, who was in Bangkok on business. He turned up with a Thai girl who he worked with, which was great as some local knowledge is useful in a strange city. She took us to a couple of temples, by river boat. The boat was pretty cool in itself, with lots of Buddhist monks in striking saffron coloured robes travelling with us.

The first temple contained a stunning statue of a reclining Buddha. I've never seen so much gold in my life, this thing is massive. We then had to put a coin in each of 120 buckets, for good luck. The sounds of hundreds of coins falling on other coins was pretty mesmerising. The second temple was equally as impressive, situated just across the river.

Colin, well Nestle actually, treated us to a dinner in a posh restaurant. It was made even nicer by the fact that lots of Thais were eating there, something that I never saw in Bali as the locals couldn't afford to eat out. After dinner we went to some night markets. I could have bought the whole place, the stuff was so cheap and also good quality, I was only limited by the lack of space in my rucksack.

The following day I visited Jim Thompson's house, something I wanted to do as there is a pub in Camberley named after him. JT was an America who came to live in Thailand and revolutionised the silk industry. He disappeared without a trace whilst on holiday in Malaysia, and no one knows what happened to him. His house is impressive, in a traditional Thai style the walls are a lovely dark maroon colour. There were lots of ancient artifacts there as well.

I spent a couple more nights with Colin, one in a very posh pub (on expenses again), where we mused about the fact that we have been out to dinner together in Huddersfield, London, Sydney and now Bangkok. Pretty cool hey. The next night we went to the Patpong markets, which are notorious for strip clubs. Apart from Colin getting constantly hassled by guys asking 'you want to see pingpong?', it wasn't too shocking. The red light district in Amsterdam is definitely worse. It was a bit upsetting to see the young Thai girls all dressed up though.

One of the best things about Bangkok is the transport. The taxis are very frustrating, they always tried to rip me off, refusing to put the meter on. They also had no idea of where they were going, even when I showed them a map and gave instructions in Thai. I guess it's pretty hard for them, as not only is Bangkok massive, all of the streets have both Thai and English names, and both are pronounced differently. I got lost in a taxi quite a few times. The river boats are cool, but the first time I got on one on my own, it just went across to the other side of the river and everyone got off. I had got totally the wrong boat, so had to make the journey back to where I had got on and start again. The tuk-tuks look great as well, although expensive. They are called tuk-tuks because that's the sound they make, extremely loud and pollution spews out of the back of them.

Another thing I love about Bangkok is the smells. Walking down the street, there are hundreds of little stalls cooking and selling food, and the different smells are amazing, smells that I have never come across before, and all intermingling with each other.

Bali - street sellers, monkeys, temples, rice and volcanoes

I felt very rich arriving in Bali, I changed some money at Singapore airport and had over 500,000 spondoolies in my wallet when I arrived at Denpasar. I splurged on a taxi to my hotel (the words hotel and taxi have not been part of my lexicon so far). The first morning I splashed out on a Gucci designer watch to replace my lost one, and wandered into town, having spent less than 10 pounds in total so far.

The Balinese in Kuta are probably the best salesmen in the world. They are all very charming, and its hard not to fall for their big cheesy smiles, cute accents and gorgeous chocolate brown skin. I went to the tourist 'office' (a hut in the street), got plied with drinks (water, too early for Bintang beer), and had 3 gorgeous men fighting for my attention. Obviously all they wanted was to sell me a tour, and I felt like after all the attention I had to buy something.

Everyone in Bali wanted to sell me something, and it got a bit tiresome after a while. The constant shouts of "Hello, you look my shop" and the "You want Transport?" is everywhere. That isn't too bad, some people are more aggressive. Absolutely everything can be bargained for, I'm getting used to bargaining, but its hard as a few thousand Rps means a lot more to them than to me, at the end of the day I was usually arguing over 30p or less. If you don't bargain though, it feels like you are getting ripped off.

My first night in Kuta, I didn't really want to go out to dinner on my own (I wasn't used to sitting in restaurants on my own at that point), so I spotted a group of people by the hotel pool and went up to them and said, "Hello, can I talk to you? I don't know anyone here" in a slightly desperate fashion. They turned out to be a group of English friends, and my plan worked as they invited me to dinner. They were a nice bunch, including a professional rugby player (mmm), a bloke who lived in Jakarta, a couple of travellers and a bloke with blue stuff on his face. They were all obsessed with surfing though, but they weren't too bad and I went out with them for two nights.

For my second day, I went on a sailing boat to Nusa Lembongan, an island just south-east of Bali. It was a bit touristy, but I met some more nice people, including a fascinating woman who told me of how she was kidnapped (twice) in South Africa, and a lovely Italian guy who decided to 'adopt me' (this happens a lot to me) and look after me the whole day. On the island I went snorkeling, and saw some impressive coral and a great school of fish. I think its amazing being in the middle of school of fish, as they all swim about an inch away from every part of me, but its impossible to touch them because if I reach out they move as quick as a flash, always swimming the same distance away. Its amazing that fish know not to be afraid of a big human being, they just act like you are another harmless fish.

In the afternoon on the island we went to see some mangroves - basically trees that were sprouting in the river, which were lovely. We also saw some seaweed farming, the locals drag it out of the sea and then sell it to places like Japan and the USA.

I got sick of Kuta very quickly, with its manic traffic, garish shops, street hawkers and McDonalds (who in their right mind let a McDs be built on a lovely stretch of beach), so I travelled to Ubud. Ubud is also too touristy, as in 99% of shops sell souveniers, but the town has a certain charm about it. My bus driver (I was the only one on the bus) did the classic, "I have friend, you stay with him yes?" and I was a bit skeptical, but it turned out to be the nicest and cheapest hotel yet (double bed, breakfast, and own bathroom with hot water for 2 pounds 60 p a night).

Ubud has a monkey sanctuary, which doubles up as a temple where the Balinese go to worship the animals. Seeing some monkeys was one of the aims of my travels, so I had to go. The monkeys were great, I bought a bunch of bananas to feed them with. They lasted about 5 seconds as a monkey jumped on me and grabbed them. I can see why they are called cheeky monkeys now.

The monkeys (long tailed macaques) were small, grey, and had weird facial hair (beards for the females, 'taches for the males). They had unbeliveably cute babies, which clung to their mother's bellies as they walked around. They provide lots of entertainment, stealing anything they can from the tourists. One tried to steal my bag, but luckily it was too heavy for the small creature. They showed their strong teeth, ripping a coconut to shreds, something that if we tried to do we'd break our teeth. In the sanctuary, I got talking to a ranger for ages, mainly because it was nice to talk to a Balinese person who didn't want to sell me something. The monkeys were like his pets, and they recognised him and responded to him when he told them off for jumping on people.

I went to a Balinese dancing show that night, because the hotel owner made me buy a ticket, but also because he was singing in the choir, so I couldn't really say no. The performance was a bit strange, I found it hard to follow the storyline, and the dancing consisted of lots of finger-pointing and eye movement. The costumes were very elaborate, they reminded me of some over-the-top pantomime costumes, with gold everywhere and strange hats. The one amazing bit about the performance was at the end, when a man kicked over a bonfire of burning coconut shells and proceeded to walk over the red hot ashes - a bit like walking over hot coals, something I've always wanted to see. The coconuts were like minature fireworks.

In Bali, there are so many temples that you are never more than about 5ft away from them. Apparently every family has its own private temple, then there are temples for the village, and bigger ones for the whole area. The stonework in the temples is very intricate, the Balinese are great stone carvers. The more impressive temples were ones that were thousands of years old. I did a tour round some of these, and also saw the rice fields, and met a really nice rice farmer. Bali's landscape has been sculpted over the years into lots of rice terraces, and actually looks better for it. On this particular tour, we stopped for lunch at a not very nice restaurant, but which had an incredible view, of the 3 main volcanoes in Bali, and also a lake. I still think volcanoes are one of the most beautiful things.

In the afternoon we stopped at a farm to see such plants as; coffee, cocoa beans, vanilla pods, ginger, bananas and papayas. I haven't seen any of these plants before, so I was fascinated.

From Ubud, I caught a crowded bus to Lovina, and met Darren. Darren was great fun, we talked non-stop throughout the very hot and sweaty journey. We decided to spend a couple of days together, mainly because we were about the only white people in Lovina, except for a few Germans. The only problem with Darren is that he had a natural ability to attract the most agressive street sellers, so we were constantly harrased. Poor guy, he was having a really bad time in Bali, and was annoyed when I said no one bothered me too much.

Darren and I decided to try out the local public transport - the Bemos and Ojaks. Our destination was a Buddisht monsastry and some hot springs. The Bemo that we caught was a great experience - they are basically small vans, converted to have some seats in the back. We paid 3,000 Rp to get to the monastry (the locals pay around 300), but as its only 17p we didn't mind too much. The Bemo had music blaring extremely loud (this was 10am), and the music had a very very fast beat, which reflected the speed of the bemo. We arrived safely though, and then had to catch an Ojak. An Ojak is a guy with a motorbike. I was quite scared of motorbikes, having not been on one for years, and we had no helmets and wore nothing but sarongs and sandals! We had a bike each, and they decided to race each other a bit. I admit it was quite exciting, and again we arrived safely.

The monastry was a bit weird, a sort of mix of Buddism and Hindu. Darren had just come from Thailand, and could explain what all of the symbols meant. After the monastry we went to the hot springs nearby. We didn't stay here too long, partly because we objected to the monkeys that were tied up (they didn't look half as healthy as the ones in the monkey temple), but mainly because the springs made our skin and clothes go a yucky green colour.

As we were walking back, I saw what is probably the best ice-cream van in the world. Well it wasn't a van, more of a brightly coloured bicycle with a box on the back, but as the guy peddled away, the motion would cause music to be played. The faster he went, the faster the music. I had a lovely chocolate ice-cream.

The bemo we caught on the way back was even funnier than the first one, it was crammed full with 9 adults and 5 kids, we were the only white people on it and the kids stared at us the whole time. When it was clear that one of the kids had to sit on my knee (there was no more room, not even on the floor), the poor thing looked horrified. I kept smiling though, as I thought it was funny. Darren didn't think it was quite so funny, especially after the woman he was squashed next to started breastfeeding her baby.

The next day I was supposed to catch a bus to Amed, but even the efforts of the 3 men who worked in the hotel couldn't get one to stop for me. Wei, a local guy turned up on his motorbike and offered to take me there himself. I think he had nothing to do, as he gave me an extremely cheap price, so I took him up on his offer. This time I got a helmet, which was good as the motorbike was faster this time and had not only me and Wei on it, but also all of my stuff. He was a lovely guy, and we talked a lot. I mentioned that I wanted to do some scuba diving, so he insisted on taking me to Tulamben, and he waited with my stuff whilst I did a two-tank dive. I'm glad he made me dive here, as it was the best dive I have done so far. At Tulamben is an old shipwreck, but its hard to tell its a shipwreck as it is completely covered in coral reef. Only the odd straight line or perfect circle gives away what is hiding underneath.

The coral was a rainbow of colours and small fish darted everywhere. The second dive was called the 'coral wall', and had just as many beautiful colours and even more impressive fish. I saw some more Lion fish (fish with a mane like a lion), a potato grouper which was similar to the potato cod I had seen in Australia, and some lovely starfish. The only bit I didn't like about the dives was that I got stung loads by plankton - at first I thought it was jellyfish, and was trying to tell my dive buddy that I had been stung (pretty difficult when you can't speak), he didn't seem that bothered. The stinging was just like hundreds of pinpricks, but after I got out I put on some of my magic Tiger Balm and the stinging went away after an hour or so.

Amed was a bit boring, there was nothing there except a few empty hotels and restaurants. Overlooking the town however is a very impressive volcano, and I worked out that if I climbed up the hill I would be facing directly west towards the volcano, a great view for a sunset.

From Amed I caught another motorbike to Candidsa, which was more of the same - empty hotels and restaurants. I was getting a bit fed up of having no one to talk to except Balis and Germans (the Germans get everywhere), so I went to Sanur. Totally bored, I booked myself on a white-water rafting trip for something to do. The river was only a grade 2, but that suited me fine as its the first time I've been rafting and didn't want anything too scary. I did the trip with a lovely Australian family, 3 adults and 3 kids. The kids were great, and their enthusiasm rubbed off on the rest of us and we all got excited about the trip. The river was very tame, lots of rapids, but about the height that you get at the rapids ride at Alton Towers. The scenery was stunning though, tropical forests and rice fields, and lots of locals washing their clothes and themselves in the river. The trip was good fun, and afterwards the Australian family invited me to spend the afternoon with them at their hotel. They had a really nice apartment, and they made me a cup of English tea (missing that a lot, as the Bali tea is nice but not the same). The swimming pool at the hotel was great, and I spent most of the afternoon playing games with the kids. In the evening, three of us (the kids went to bed early), went to an amazing restaurant, right on the beach. I mean literally on the beach, with sand under the tables and our feet. The restaurant had several tanks full of live seafood, and (something else I've always wanted to do), I picked one out to eat. I decided on a crab, which wasn't the best of ideas as it came out whole, completely smothered in sweet chilli sauce, which meant that I got the sauce all over me as I attempted to eat it. It was extremely hard getting the crab meat out of its shell, as it kept slipping out of my fingers and shooting accross the table. It was good fun though.

I'm ready to leave Bali now. Bali has lots of good points, but also as many bad points. The food is generally amazing (except for one memorable meal which looked exactly like a plate of mud), the beer is great, everything is cheap and some of the scenery is stunning. On the other hand though, tourism has spoilt a beautiful island, and the constant selling of things gets pretty annoying. The empty hotels and restaurants were also a bit spooky, Bali has been hit hard recently because of the bomb, the tsunami and the recent drugs scandals, and you can see a big effect on some of the empty towns. I'd like to explore the rest of Indonesia, but I don't think I'll be back here in a hurry.

Australia’s East Coast - Maggie Island, the Whitsundays, Fraser, an army of crabs, meeting Matt & Lins, Byron Bay

The East Coast was predictably full of teenage backpackers who were only interested in going out drinking and partying all of the time, but if you can put up with the crap hostels and the people coming and going at all hours day and night, there are a few beautiful spots and it's all good fun. I travelled most of the way with the same girl, Dana, who I had met in Port Douglas. We were destined to travel together, as we kept staying at the same hostels in the same rooms, and even ended up sitting next to each other on a long distance bus, although we had booked separately. Luckily we got on really well, which is just as well as she never stopped talking!

Cairns was crap, there was nothing to do except go out drinking, there wasn’t even a nice beach to get over the hangovers on. I don’t know how anyone can spend time there. I spent a whole 24 hours, and couldn’t wait to leave. I jumped on a bus to Mission Beach, which was lovely. Deserted beaches surrounded by rainforest, like Cape Tribulation but even more mosquitos. We managed to find a nice hostel here, and had a great jamming session one evening with such diverse instruments as a didgeridoo, a set of bongos and a guitar. I tried all three instruments, but not very successfully, so they made me sing (badly) instead. I also had a go at the fire-dancing (with unlit sticks, I’m not that stupid), that someone had bought.

Then it was onto Magnetic Island, so called because it made Captain Cook’s compass go funny, but very appropriately named because it is extremely attractive and hard to leave. Dana and I met Charlie there, a lovely bloke who made us laugh constantly and was great fun to hang round with. We also met a rather strange girl called Rebecca, and the 4 of us did lots of walking in the eucalyptus forests together. The highlight of our stay on Magnetic Island was a Full Moon party. It was one of the best parties I have been to, the music was fantastic, the atmosphere chilled and everyone was having a great time. It was like a nightclub, but in the open air, so no smoke / smells / claustrophobia like normal clubs. We did get lots of attention from blokes, but not too much hassle. We stayed dancing until around 4am, then left early (most people were staying until the sun came up) as we had to get up again at 9am to travel down to Airlie Beach.

Getting to Airlie was a rough journey – Dana and I were both tired & hung over, and we had to negotiate 3 buses and a ferry crossing before we made it. It wasn’t worth the hassle however, as Airlie is probably the crappiest place I have been to so far. It is similar to Cairns – no nice beach, nothing to do in the day, most people start drinking around 11am or even earlier to kill the boredom. All of the hostels (we went to about 5 different ones) were dirty, with crap communal areas. We did have one good night partying here however, and it is the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands, something which I had to tick off the list.

I wasn’t really impressed with the Whitsundays. They are just islands, nothing special, certainly not as nice as other islands I’ve seen. Whitehaven beach was good, the sand was so smooth it was like silk, and I went snorkelling and fed lots of beautiful silvery fish with some bread. But the beach was crowded, and wasn’t as pretty as the ones on Magnetic Island. I did have a good day out, but I wouldn’t bother coming back.

We got out of Airlie as soon as we could and headed to Hervey Bay for Fraser Island, something else I needed to tick off my list. Things started looking up, after a hellish overnight bus ride, we ended up in a lovely, friendly hostel, one of the few good ones on the East Coast. We set aside a spare day here, to recover from the bus journey. Dana spent most of the day sleeping, but I didn't feel too bad so I decided to wander down to the beach in the afternoon. On the beach, there was loads of people who seemed to be digging for something. They were quite far out, as was the tide. I couldn't contain my curiosity, so I decided to investigate. As I walked towards them, I suddenly saw lots of crabs scuttling away from me. There were hundreds of thousands of them, and they looked like a minature crab army. Of course, Australians don't mess about with naming things, and I found out later they were called Soldier crabs. If I got too close to them, they would bury themselves in the sand, digging down in a corkscrew fashion. I assumed that this is what the people were digging for, but I had to ask why, as they weren't very big and didn't look good to eat. In fact, the people were digging for Yabbies - prawn like creatures that you have to hold by their tail else they'll bite you. They were collecting them for fish bait. I met a really interesting local couple here.

Fraser Island is absolutely stunning. Before I arrived, I expected it to be covered in sand dunes (it’s the largest sand island in the world), but it isn’t, its covered in beautiful forests, with mud tracks snaking through. You need a 4x4 as an ordinary car wouldn’t last 5 minutes. The lakes are something else…from a distance they were beautiful colours; emerald green, aqua blue. When I went swimming, the water was so clear and clean and fresh, nicer than anywhere I’ve swum in my life, it's like swimming in a lake full of pure mineral water. The water in the creeks is so clear you can hardly tell it is there. The sand is silky soft, and the trees brilliant green. At Lake Mackenzie, just to top it off, we saw a lovely rainbow over the trees behind the lake.

At one creek Dana and I went a bit crazy, splashing around in the crystal clear water, and lying down in the creek and walking the length of it on our hands. People were looking at us a bit weird, but we were having so much fun we didn’t care.

On Fraser, we had the opportunity of a light plane ride. It was only 60 bucks, so I splurged and went for it. It was so worth the money, we got to see the beautiful sand blows (like glaciers made of sand), a butterfly shaped lake, and looked for sharks in the sea. The forest from that height looked like a field of broccoli, good enough to eat.

I had such a good time on Fraser, not only because it is one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to, but also we had a really good group, some lovely English and German girls, and a sweet Brazilian guy who decided to follow me around all the time! One of the best things about travelling is meeting so many different nationalities.

I carried on down the coast to Noosa to see Matt & Lindsay, friends from back home. They are also travelling, but have stopped in Noosa to do some work. I can see why they chose here, Noosa is one of the towns on the coast not overrun with backpackers, and its actually like 3-4 small villages linked together, with a great beach and forest. They live in a place called Sunshine Beach, how nice does that sound. They both work in one of the poshest fish & chip shops I’ve seen; no grease or fatty smells in sight. It was good to catch up, but we could only chat for about an hour because they were working.

From Noosa I went to Brisbane for a night. Brisbane is another crap town, not half as nice as Melbourne or Adelaide. It would have been a complete waste of time, if I hadn’t stumbled onto a big Buddhist festival which was full of bright colours and lots of music and dancing. It got me in the mood for my Asia trip.

The last place I stopped was Byron Bay. Byron is lovely, a fantastic beach and nice walks, and the whole place feels a bit like Glastonbury festival – full of hippy wannabees and peace and love. I thought it was great. I treated myself to a massage here as it was cheap, and my neck & shoulders were hurting from all the bus rides and rucksack carrying. The massage was great at the time, I can’t believe how tense my muscles were. The masseur did a good job in that she got rid of all of the tension and knots in my back, but I felt a bit weird afterwards and I feel like I have lost all strength in my back, so that my rucksack feels a lot heavier to carry. I think it’s getting better though, just need to get my muscles back!

Dana persuaded me to go to a Yoga session, which was great, its something I’m definitely going to look into when I get back to the UK. I found it pretty hard going though, and my old shoulder injury came back :-(

It was hard to leave Byron Bay, and also leave Dana, but I was desperate for a bit of luxury after staying in horrible hostels all the way down the coast. Being back in Sydney is heaven, its like coming home. White fluffy towels, a double bed and a room to myself, free internet, tim tams in the fridge, gorgeous private swimming pool, what more could I ask for? It would be very hard to leave, if it wasn’t for the fact my next destination is Bali.

I have loved Australia, even the crap hostels - its all part of the experience and makes you really appreciate the small things in life. I have managed to lose half of my rucksack - including my towel (where the ever-useful sarong comes in), a phone sim card, a watch, an eye-mask, half a swimming costume, a washing line, my toiletry bag...I could go on. It makes me realise what little I really need, and everyone comments on how small and light my rucksack is.