Jacob with Choclate face..again

 

Donna with baby Flo at xmas 07

 

James came to visit from oz

James came to visit from oz

Back to the uk

So back after a year aboard, I will be taking up this blog again, as I enjoyed the travelzang one so much.

This is the second week, Eleanor has already got a good job in London, we have decorated a room and seen all the family.

We hope to move back into south street in Feb 2008

Our room at Celias

This pic was created with my new K800i nice!

Bangkok 2nd Time Around

So we came back to bangkok from Koh Tao this time by boat and overnight train, the train of course was an hour late, but the carriage was quite clean and the sleeper mattresses was mega soft and clean which was a bonus for the train seemed to have no suspension that or the track had sleeping policeman to slow the train down, I have never been on a train that bumped so much, they also seemed to think that turning the lights off to go to sleep was for wimps, but with the wonders of ear plugs and eye masks, the train was no match for the travel zangs.

We hooked up in bangkok with a friend called Carolin, our German Dutch looking dive buddy who is vonderful, we have had a completely different experience in Bangkok this time as we decided to stay in the center of town on "shopping street" in a lovely hostel called suk 11 with bags of character and close to the sky train. We had a lovely few days shopping and getting the sand out of our hair so to speak.

Anyway, Spiderman 3 was cool and 28 weeks later was awesome (we LOVE zombie movies) and so you can see that we are fully immersing ourselves in Thai culture. Someone pointed out the great palace from the bus last night up to chang mai where we are now but Eleanor could be bothered to look as we had stolen / borrowed a copy of Empire magazine from a bar and that was more interesting. We will do one or two more temples but India kinda templed us out!!!

Off to do some "trekking" for lame-o's where you walk about 3 hours then get on an elephant and see "hill tribes" (the ones with rings round their necks) although by all accounts they have a group of tourists every day so not sure how genuine the whole experience will be but at least it's not diving or temples!!!

After that we may do some massage / jewelry /wax batik courses / downhill mountain biking painting before setting out for Loas.

Missing home but now we're back on the run and a renewed sense of adventure. We'll be in Laos from 1 Jun for 2 weeks and internet is prob not available there (there is apparently one ATM in the whole country!) so you may not hear from us in that time.

Koh Tao - Dive Master Snorkel Test

For those not in the know, the final piece of training for dive masters is a very serious test called The Snorkel Test. It was clearly invented by a Brit as no other nationality (except perhaps the Aussies) could come up with something like this.

Essentially you go to Lotus Bar* (*location optional) and after warming up with a few G&Ts, and have had a bit of food (we had a lovely fish BBQ with friends on the beach), you get sat down on The Snorkel Test Seat and are presented with a custom-designed mask and snorkel combo with a special funnel attached to the snorkel which you then don. A small bucket (about 1 litre) of cocktail is then poured down the aforementioned snorkel funnel and you have to drink the whole thing in one go without a) breathing, b) puking, or c) passing out completely.



Well as Kieran and El are such true Brits we managed to pass the test with flying colours and to be honest the rest of the night was a horrible sticky mess that neither of us can really remember!!!

Suffice it to say it was a really fun night with our dive buddies and the next day we didn't manage to get out of bed until 7.30pm. Obviously we are never drinking ever again (until the next time) and have realised that once you're past 30 you just can't do things like that anymore! Still it was a good way to say goodbye to Koh Tao and we made a fairly quiet exit 2 days later, exactly 2 months after we got there.