Macau

Macau is an odd place, the first reaction would be to say what everyone says and that it's the Vegas of the east, but it's not...it's the Blackpool of the China!! OK, it's got the grand casinos of Vegas but it also has the regular tourist attractions like old buildings from it's colonial past, you can go to the top of the tower to see the view from too. Also, just like Blackpool, finding anyone who speaks English is quite a novelty. They really don't speak a word of it here in Macau, Andrea opted for the 'shouting the question in English even louder whilst I just got better at pointing.

Anyway, arriving in Macau is an eye opener. The taxi took us past the new venetian casino which is simply enormous and is the second largest building in the world, then over the bridge gave us view of the Grand Lisboa which is like a giant LED ball with a golden palm tree shaped hotel planted on top of it.

We stayed at the Hotel/Casino Fortuna initially which had more modestly priced rooms but like vegas the room prices go sky high on a Friday and Saturday night so we had to move again to a regular hotel that had views Chinese mainland! The casinos here are what Andrea call "hardcore" casinos full of very high stakes games, oh and stupid card games like Casino War which consists of everyone being given a card and if the dealers card is higher than yours, you loose ! it's a nice fast way to loose your money.

Walking about one night we stumbled upon the control tower for the motor racing street circuit. There has been nods from the bods saying that it will be on the F1 Calender soon, apparently. Further on from here was a weird "theme village" that contained, a volcano, a Chinese kinda temple, a stereotypical middle eastern town, Italy, New Orleans, and of course Africa. Apart from the middle east and the volcano, the other areas were themes for the restaurants within them. It was all very cheesy and the locals and Andrea loved it. The thing that made me laugh was there were quite a few posters advertising a kind of an advanced laser quest that was going to the held in the middle east !! I'm guessing the soldiers vs terrorists is a stereotype too now!

Anyway, wandering about we discovered where the new MGM Grand is going to be built, it's certainly big and kinda looks like 3 giant lego bricks ontop of each other. The MGM Lion is very impressive as its colours change occasionally.

On the next block to the MGM we stopped at a bar called the "MP3 Bar" that had some westerners there. The geeky side of us was drawn to the MP3 but after sitting down there it wasn't until a very scantily clad lady came up to us and asked what we fancied to drink did we realise what it was all about. It was then that we noticed that all the westerners were blokes and all the ladies were Russian/East European go-go dancers. They even had a pole in the middle of the bar where occasionally one of the girls would give a performance. Anyway, there were a lot of men that were "on business" in the bar with leggy blonds all over them, that was until a bunch of leggy asians wandered up the road and stopped outside (i think they were mobile go-go girls, have to keep up with the times i guess). They then swamped the blokes and were chatting and getting all touchy touchy. I had the feeling that at any moment a great big "girlfriend" *wobbles head* fight was gonna break out between the blonds and the asians....alas not. It was all very interesting though and I would recommend it for a drink or two.

Macau seemed to be famous for two things food wise, one was these really dry shortbread biscuits, which are quite nice once the dryness has gone, and these pieces of flat beef jerky Chinese style with all sorts of sauces over them. The shops selling these things were swamped with a throng of asian tourists buying loads of stuff whilst outside there were ladies from the shops offering samples of the biscuits and the jerky. They were at least to everyone except for Andrea as one lady refused to give her a sample biscuit. There was a moment where the woman was stood on the spot turning in circles whilst Andrea was running round the outside trying to grab a biscuit ! hehehe.

Andrea loved Macau and could of probably spent a couple of weeks here, for my part I though Macau was ok but it would be interesting to see it in about 5 years or so. For me, Hong Kong was much much better. :)

Bangkok

We were here for 3 days and purposely didnt want to do any of the normal temple sites but go shopping and see the night sights.
So first stop was a hotel on Th Khao San called D & D inn. We arrived here at 8 in the morning from the train journey. We didnt actually want to be on Khao San Road but the taxi driver managed to overcharge us and then just dropped us off on this road even though we directed him to another road putting us both in a bad mood.
This road is where all the backpackers stay on. Its a drinking road but weirdly closes at 12. For example at 12 oclock on the first night we were sat on the road on some plastic stools chatting to some people drinking from plastic glasses, when suddenly we had to stand up and look like we were just walking around as the police went past. We then were able to sit back on our plastic stools again and continue chatting.
The days were spent shopping, we found a great shopping centre that had floors and floors of stuff to buy, so we bought a lot of stuff. It was Simons turn to go mad this time.
To go shopping we took what they call Tuk-Tuks . This was one of those things on the tick list to have done and is now completed. It was not the nicest journey we have had as it stinks of exhaust fumes and is very nosy.
The other entry on our list of things to do was to go to a ping pong show on Patpong Road. This was a disaster as we got ripped of when we went in to a club and had to pay triple the price of the drinks that they said. I tried to argue with the madam but really we didnt have any choice and as Simon pointed out, me arguing with this women is not going to get us anywhere apart from a punch on the nose. The girls just wanted tipping all the time for trying to massage my arms whilst we watched the bored fat semi naked girl fire darts from her bits into the balloons (was actually pretty impressive). We quickly had our drinks and left and instead of going into any other bars we went around the market instead. Ah shopping again.
So it was back to forgetting the seedy side of Bangkok and sticking with the dodgy shopping side of Bangkok. I think overall i preferred Kuala Lumpur for shopping.
Just before we left Thailand i managed to convince Simon that he couldnt leave without having some type of massage so he had 30mins of foot reflexology and i had a back massage. I think Simon came out better then i did because the women whilst very good caused me a lot of pain pulling me and pounding me. I think the objective is for them to get my bones to crack but as my bones dont really crack anyway it really hurt :-).

Flight to Macau was on Thursday 11th October on Air Asia

Overnight Train to Bangkok from Champeon

Sat on a train writing this, its 10 oclock at night sat in 1st class on the lower bunk with Simon nattering away to me in the dark on the top bunk. We have left Ko Toa and caught a boat for 3 hours to mainland Thailand and now we are on the overnight train to Bangkok. We paid 1500 bahts each which is about 23 quid altogether. We decided to go 1st class as we get our own little cabin with a sink and space for the luggage. Shame we arrive in Bangkok at 6 in the morning. Before we got on the train we had a couple of hours to kill at Champeon town so we went for a really nice but oh so so spicy thai meal. I had spicy shrimp noodles and Simon had fried pork and fried rice with extra chilli added. We both had to sup our drinks quick just to get rid of the inflamed lips. We had a quick nosy through the night market and bought some grapes for 20bahts,and a really tacky but amusing dragon drum thingy for 40bahts(75p). This seemed to amuse people as we were waiting at the platform trying to work out which train we should get on, admittedly tippsy after supping a lot of drink cos of how spicy the food was. When i went in to the toilet at the station (which i took a pic of cos of the mold on the wall) Simon got accosted by a thai women and her son and he thought they wer begging for money but actually the son he had a questionaire that he wanted answering for school. We got a pic of them. I also got a pic of me with our guard from the train. They did the Vietnam giggling thing of wanting to see the pic once it had been taken.

Ko Tao - on the populated side of the island

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko_Tao
For the past 4 or 5 nights (im struggling to remember the day nether mind the date) we have stayed at the Sunset Buri resort. In a nice air con room. We went as cheap as we were willing to go in the 500 baht room over the otherside of the island, this place is 1000baht(13quid) and is much nicer and it has a swimming pool, which is good because the water here is full of jelly fish which im scared of. Simons been teaching me in the pool to dive down and pick the stone up from the bottom. i finally achieved it on my last dive down on the last day, with my goggles on and my nose clip. Diving in from the side next lesson.
Ive had a bad belly most of the time here and kept having to run off most nights back to the hotel. Bit embarrasing after meeting a couple(Roxanne and Peter) that Simon had met at Brekkie in Ko Phi Phi. We went out with them a couple of nights in particular to play pool, watch england beat aussie in rugby and then caberet. Caberet consits of the lady boys badly miming to songs dressed up in wild outfits, very entertaining.
We have been on 2 trips whilst being here:
Fishing trip. Simon caught a fish but whilst winding it in, a baracuda came and bit the fish of so Simon only ended up with the head of a fish. However as that was the only thing we caught he won our round the world fishing comp this time so its 2 each at the mo, might have to wait until we get back to england for the tiebreaker.
Andrea - Fiji, Whitsunday islands
Simon - Cairns, Ko Toa

Sorkeling trip. This was one of the best places we have ever snorkeled. We went to 5 different places over the day. The first stop was Shark Bay. I didnt see it but Simon said he saw a shark that was bigger then him. He said that was scary. One of the bays we went to was like a school for baby fish. It had all the pretty fish everywhere but they were tiny. We saw lots of 'Finding Nemo' fish but the best bit was seeing the baby sharks. We saw a couple of them swimming around and we would try to swim after them to take pics but they are to fast and to scared of people. Another bay called Mango Bay had the most amount of jelly fish ive ever seen. Its strange but i dont mind getting in the water knowing there is baby sharks there but show me some jelly fish and im scared.
The final stopping place was the island of nang-yuan. This is a beautiful island that has the water coming in from both sides and there is a tiny strip of sand you can sunbathe on in between. Of one of the sides you can go snorkeling which had some great fish and coral but for me the most interesting thing was watching the scuba divers in the water learning how to dive properly. They would be in the water, taking their masks of and learning how to put the mask on and clear it of water. I cant even dive to pick a stone up from the bottom of the swimming pool without lessons from Simon, i really dont think scuba diving is for me.

Holy Storms

It pretty much rains in Asia everyday, it's a bit like Florida in that it just chucks it down for 30 mins or so then disappears until the day after. The storms here in Thailand are like that, except that they tend to pounce on you. You can be sat on the beach reading your book or listening to your ipod and you spot a storm off in the distance. Then for the next hour the storm is still no nearer to you and the sun is shining. All of a sudden it will be chucking it down because the storm seemed to teleport to your beach. I only mention it because it happened again today, this time I forgot to grab my book in the rush to take shelter...it's soaking. Whenever it does happens though it always makes me laugh as it reminds me of this Monty Python sketch...



...oh btw, Andrea is the one camping it up !

Koh Tao

The laptop has become infested with tiny little ants/termites (i can't tell which). Anyway, if the laptop is infested then i can imagine that everything else is. It makes typing this blog entry rather interesting. It's like a game of "whack a mole"...or rather "whack a mite". Our entry into the UK will be interesting going through the "something to declare" ;)

After arriving here in Koh Tao it was a taxi journey to the east side of the island. The roads here are really bad and taxi's tend to be Toyota HiLuxs or other big pick up 4x4 trucks. Everyone just sits in the back of the pick ups getting bounced around. Today, Andrea tried to use the camcorder on the back of one, i suspect it'll make everyone sick who watches it.

Anyway, the reason that we chose Koh Tao was that it was a little of the beaten track and it's also the #2 diving point in the world (#1 being the barrier reef). This was all according to them, which judging by the sheer number of diving companies here they might be right. As i've pointed out already, there isn't much in the way of roads here, but that's not all...24 hour electricity is a luxury, as is hot water. The mossies are pretty rampant on this island and seem to attack at any time of the day, the good news is is that you can see them to hit them. I walloped a big one yesterday that was feasting on my leg, when i lifted my hand up there was a big blood splatter mark left. I'm guessing it was my blood.

We were told that the east side was the best side to come snorkeling so we ended up at a place called Black Tip Diving in Tanote bay. The snorkeling was very very good, except that sometimes the water got a little cloudy. Great coral of all sorts, some small and wavey, some the size of buses. The variety of fish is pretty good too. The only problem with the place we stayed at was the hotel room, it had curtains that were too small, ants/termites and mossies everywhere (hence the problem with the laptop), power cuts, the worst shower ever (more of a cold dribble), and the hut had the same build quality as a "Prisoner Cell Block H" set...close the door and the whole wall wobbles.

Today, we had enough of slumming it and decided to leave the east side and head for west side where civilization is a bit better. Still no hot water though, but it appears to be one of our best rooms so far.